Abstract
While migratory species can adjust their migration timing in response to climate change, it remains unclear whether these shifts can insulate them from population decline. Here we compiled a global database pairing 4,351 population-level estimates of migration timing across 549 avian species with corresponding population trends and rates of climate change at breeding and non-breeding grounds, coupled with a full-annual-cycle theoretical model. Building on evidence for an accelerating advancement in bird migration over the past century (cumulatively advanced 13.86 days from 1970 to 2019), we show that rapidly advancing migration is beneficial for bird abundance during pre-breeding migration but detrimental during post-breeding migration. The net demographic benefit depends on pre-breeding advancement outpacing that during post-breeding migration. This benefit is more pronounced in large-bodied species. Our findings highlight that population benefits of rapidly shifted migratory behaviour are season dependent, underscoring the importance of full-annual-cycle perspectives for understanding and conserving migratory species under global change.
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Data availability
The full database is available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31225291 (ref. 90). Categorized population trends are publicly available through the IUCN Red List (https://www.iucnredlist.org/en). Time-series abundance databases are accessible through the Living Planet Index (https://livingplanetindex.org/), TedraDensity (https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/TetraDENSITY_Population_Density_dataset/5371633) and BioTIME (https://biotime.st-andrews.ac.uk/) databases. Climate and NDVI data are available through Climatic Research Unit Time Series version 4.06 (https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/) and the PKU GIMMS NDVI product (https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.7441558) (ref. 96). Species life-history traits can be assessed through AVONET (https://figshare.com/s/b990722d72a26b5bfead) (ref. 101) BIRDBASE (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27051040) (ref. 102) and https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2024.102492. Species distributions are available via BirdLife DataZone at https://datazone.birdlife.org. Species phylogenies are available through BirdTree (https://birdtree.org/). Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
Analyses were performed in R (version 4.4.1). Code is available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31225291 (ref. 90).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Shanxing Gong, Pubin Hong, Michel Loreau, Mingyu Luo and Xiaotong Ren for helpful discussion and comments.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 32588202 and 32425036 to S.W., 32301284 to J.L.).
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J.L. and S.W. conceived the initial idea with inputs from W.X., R.A.F. and T.M.; J.L. and Q.Y. collected data; J.L. conducted the analysis with inputs from Q.Y. and S.W., and visualized the results with inputs from W.X.; J.L. and S.W. developed the theoretical framework; J.L., W.X., R.A.F., T.M. and S.W. contributed to the interpretation of the results; J.L. led the writing of the manuscript with inputs from all authors.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Migration flyways and geographic variation of migration timing change rates.
(a) Migratory connections across flyways. Colour represents flyways, and lines show connections for populations with available information for both breeding and non-breeding grounds, points that are not linked show site locations where data on connections were missing. (b) Pre-breeding migration timing change rate across flyways. (c) Post-breeding migration timing change rate across flyways. Posterior means and 50% credible intervals estimated by phylogenetically controlled MCMCglmm models are displayed, full posterior distribution is presented in Table S2. Letters indicate significant differences, defined as pairwise differences between flyways for which more than 90% of the posterior distribution did not overlap zero. Values of P (>0) and P (<0) higher than 0.80 are shown, to indicate substantial directional support even when pairwise differences among groups were not significant. Numbers outside brackets show the sample size of population-level migration timing change rate, and numbers inside brackets indicate the number of species. World map basemap © 2026 Esri and its licensors.
Source data
Extended Data Fig. 2 Relationships between population trends and migration timing change rates across migration stages, with population trends estimated by time-series abundance data.
(a,d) Pre-breeding migration; (b,e) Post-breeding migration; (c,f) Difference in change rates between pre- and post-breeding migration. In (a-c), population trends are shown as categories (that is, increasing, stable, and decreasing) for comparison with IUCN assessments. In (d-f), population trends are represented as continuous population change rates over time, which reveal patterns consistent with (a-c). Posterior mean and 50% credible intervals estimated by phylogenetically controlled MCMCglmm models are displayed, and the full posterior distribution is presented in Table S3 & S4. P (>0) and P (<0) represent the probability that a given parameter is positive or negative, calculated as the proportion of the posterior that is higher or lower than zero, for instance, P (<0) = 1 means 100% of the posterior distribution is lower than zero. Numbers outside brackets show the number of population-level change rate in migration timing, numbers inside brackets show the number of species. In (a)–(c), letters indicate significant differences, defined as pairwise differences between population trend groups for which more than 90% of the posterior distribution did not overlap zero. Values of P (>0) and P (<0) higher than 0.80 are shown, to indicate substantial directional support even when pairwise differences among groups were not significant. In (d)–(f), error bars show the standard errors of both change rate in migration timing and population trend.
Source data
Extended Data Fig. 3 The association between change rate in migration timing and population trend across global flyways.
(a, b) The association in the pre- and post-breeding migration stages, population trends were obtained by IUCN database. (c, d) The association in the pre- and post-breeding migration stages, population trends were estimated by abundance database. Posterior mean and 50% credible intervals estimated by phylogenetically controlled MCMCglmm models are displayed, and the full posterior distribution is presented in Table S6 & S7. Letters indicate significant differences, defined as pairwise differences between population trend groups for which more than 90% of the posterior distribution did not overlap zero. Values of P (>0) and P (<0) higher than 0.80 are shown, to indicate substantial directional support even when pairwise differences among groups were not significant. Numbers outside brackets show the number of population-level change rate in migration timing, and numbers inside brackets show the number of species.
Source data
Extended Data Fig. 4 Changes in migration timing and population growth rate in the full annual cycle theoretical model.
(a) Timing across the annual cycle. Tpre, Tb, Tpost and Tw represent the duration of pre-breeding migration, breeding, post-breeding migration and non-breeding stages respectively. d1 and d2 represent the start of pre-breeding and post-breeding migration respectively. (b) Shifts in pre-breeding migration advancement and the effects to population growth rate. ΔTpre represents changes in pre-breeding migration timing per year, and ΔTpost represents changes in post-breeding migration timing per year. (c) Shifts in post-breeding migration advancement and the effects to population growth rate. α1 and α2 represent the daily maximal energy intake rates during the breeding and non-breeding stages, and β1 and β2 are coefficients representing energy shortfalls due to phenological mismatching.
Extended Data Fig. 5 Change rates of temperature, precipitation and vegetation greenness index for both breeding and non-breeding grounds.
(a) Change rate of temperature. (b) Change rate of precipitation. (c) Change rate of vegetation greenness index. n represents the number of climate change rates. The centre line indicates the median, the bounds of the box indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the whiskers extend to the most extreme observations within 1.5 × the interquartile range.
Source data
Extended Data Fig. 6 Change rate in pre-breeding migration timing as a function of species body mass.
The mean and 50% credible interval represent the model fit of a phylogenetically controlled MCMCglmm model are displayed, the full posterior distribution is presented in Table S8. Data points within 95% of the data distribution are shown, with point size representing their weight in the analysis.
Source data
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Liu, J., Xu, W., Fuller, R.A. et al. Avian migration timing advances linked to season-dependent population benefits.
Nat Ecol Evol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03198-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03198-9
Source: Ecology - nature.com
