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.