5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Our work adds evidence to the spatial requirements of large soaring
birds such as vultures, and the importance of individual and regional
differences in explaining their movement patterns. Contrary to our
expectations, we found sex-dependent spatial segregation in this
monomorphic species, maybe related to behavioural differences between
males and females, particularly during the breeding period. Moreover, we
observed that vultures showed larger home-ranges and cumulative distance
travelled during the breeding period, when site-fidelity is higher, with
females with females traveling further. Finally, despite high levels of
variation in home range sizes between breeding regions, there were no
clear differences in site fidelity between breeding regions over time,
which may indicate stability in the home range.
Our findings open new promising avenues for research on inter-individual
differences in optimal foraging, and on the intrinsic and extrinsic
factors operating at multiple levels (Williams & Safi 2020). Beyond
this, increasing our knowledge of how these patterns translate into
regional differences (or lack thereof) is crucial in predicting
population dynamics through movement ecology (Shaw et al. , 2020).
This information is crucial for the effective management and
conservation of highly mobile species which require protective measures
to be implemented at large spatial scales.