Evolution of leap-frog migration: A test of alternative hypotheses

Leap-frog migration is a common migration pattern in birds where the breeding and wintering latitudes between populations are in reversed latitudinal sequence. Competition for wintering and breeding sites has been suggested to be an ultimate factor and several competitor-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain this pattern. If wintering sites close to the breeding sites are favored, competitive exclusion could force subdominant individuals to winter further away. Competitive exclusion could be mediated either through body size or by prior occupancy. The alternative “spring predictability” hypothesis assumes competition for sufficiently close wintering areas, allowing the birds to use autocorrelated weather cues to optimally time spring migration departure. To test predictions and assumptions of these hypotheses, we combined morphometrics, migration and weather data from four populations of common ringed plover breeding along a latitudinal (56-68°N) and climatic gradient (temperat..., , This data have been derived from light-level geolocators. The raw light data for analysis is available upon request. , # Data from: Evolution of leap-frog migration: A test of alternative hypotheses

## **Data files**

Description of data set and associated column names for morph.data.csv, timing.data.csv, gls.positions and temp.medel.csv, and description of *NCEP.data.T64.20230324.rds*, *temp.corr.for.raster.rds*, *winter.home.ranges.ud75.rds* and *winter_union_sf.rds*.

**morph.data.csv**

Contains morphological data. Data analyzed with code package *morph.R*.

LOCAL                 =                         Population (Abisko, Ammarnäs, Malören, Ottenby)      

WING                 =                         Wing length in mm (maximum wing cord [Svensson, 1992])

BH                      =                         Total head length in mm (beak + head [Green, 1980])

TARS                   =                         Tarsus length in mm

**timing.data.csv**

This data set contains the timing of departure and arrivals at breeding and wintering sites, respectively, as well as arrival the continental Europe (...