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On how Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) spread to the Americas: meteorological tools to assess probable colonization trajectories

International Journal of Biometeorology volume 58, pages 1879–1891 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

The Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) is native to the old world. Before 1877 no Cattle Egrets had been sighted in the Americas. There are no written records of this species being transported to or escaping from captivity in South America and there is enough evidence to suggest that individuals are capable of making the crossing from Africa to the Americas unaided. Since long-distance movements of species are partly dependent on meteorological events we analyze the possibility of B. ibis crossing the Atlantic Ocean aided only by wind conditions evaluating existing theories and shedding light on their feasibility through the analysis of weather patterns and atmospheric circulation. Zonal and meridional wind components taken from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project were used to calculate trajectories between different points along the West African coast and South America between 1871 and 1920 in two seasons (March–April and September–October). From a total of 192,864 trajectories analyzed, 1,695 with origin in the west coast of Africa reached the NE coast of South America or the Caribbean islands in less than a week (successful trajectories). The probability of these successful trajectories originating in Central Africa was above 0.65 for the majority of the destinations analyzed. Particularly, in Guyana and Suriname where B. ibis was first sighted, the probability of the origin being Central Africa was 0.84, most of them occurring during March. Several weather events favored not only the colonization of the Cattle Egret but also its establishment and spread all throughout the Americas.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Gerardo R. Cueto for his statistical suggestions. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their insight and their helpful and constructive comments for improving the manuscript.

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Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires–IEGEBA (CONICET-UBA), Ciudad Universitaria, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Carolina Massa

  2. Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Moira Doyle

  3. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires-UMI-IFAECI, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Moira Doyle

  4. Instituto de Investigaciones en Producción Animal, Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias, Universidad de Buenos Aires (CETA-FVET-UBA-INPA/CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Roberta Callicó Fortunato

Authors
  1. Carolina Massa
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  2. Moira Doyle
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  3. Roberta Callicó Fortunato
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Correspondence to Carolina Massa.

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Massa, C., Doyle, M. & Callicó Fortunato, R. On how Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis) spread to the Americas: meteorological tools to assess probable colonization trajectories. Int J Biometeorol 58, 1879–1891 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0790-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0790-z

Keywords

  • Bubulcus ibis
  • Range extension
  • Meteorological modeling
  • American continent
  • Vagrancy