Persistent species relationships characterize migrating bird communities across stopover sites and seasons

Global migrations of diverse animal species often converge along the same routes, bringing together seasonal assemblages of animals that may compete, prey on each other, and share information or pathogens. These interspecific interactions, when energetic demands are high and time to complete journeys is short, may influence survival, migratory success, stopover ecology, and migratory routes. Numerous accounts suggest interspecific co-migrations are globally distributed in aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial systems, although the study of migration to date has rarely investigated species interactions among migrating animals. Here we test the hypothesis that migrating animals are communities engaged in networks of ecological interactions. We leverage over half a million records of 50 bird species from five bird banding sites collected over 8-23 years to test for species associations using social network analyses. We find strong support for persistent species relationships across sites and be..., , , # Persistent species relationships characterize migrating bird communities across stopover sites and seasons

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3xsj3txqp](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3xsj3txqp)

This dataset includes matrices of pairwise species associations and affiliation indices during spring and fall migration at five different bird banding sites.

## Description of the data and file structure

The names of the csv files indicate the site (BBBO = Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, BULA = Burke Lake Banding Station, BWATER = Breakwater, CUT = Old Cut, PARC = Powdermill Avian Research Center), the migratory season (spring or fall), and whether the matrix consists of species associations (\"adj\") or affiliation indices (\"GAI\"). The affiliation indices are center-scaled to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1, so their file name includes \"centered.\" See the manuscript for more details, but essentially, the species associations represent the probability that individuals of two differ...