Spectacular long-distance migration has evolved repeatedly in animals enabling exploration of resources separated in time and space. In birds, these patterns are largely driven by seasonality, cost of migration, and asymmetries in competition leading most often to leapfrog migration, where northern breeding populations winter furthest to the south. Here, we show that the highly aerial common swift Apus apus, spending the nonbreeding period on the wing, instead exhibits a rarely found chain migration pattern, where the most southern breeding populations in Europe migrate to wintering areas furthest to the south in Africa, whereas the northern populations winter to the north. The swifts concentrated in three major areas in sub-Saharan Africa during the nonbreeding period, with substantial overlap of nearby breeding populations. We found that the southern breeding swifts were larger, raised more young, and arrived to the wintering areas with higher seasonal variation in greenness (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) earlier than the northern breeding swifts. This unusual chain migration pattern in common swifts is largely driven by differential annual timing and we suggest it evolves by prior occupancy and dominance by size in the breeding quarters and by prior occupancy combined with diffuse competition in the winter.

AsOER Associazione Ornitologi Emilia Romagna Italy

Bird Monitoring Unit SEO BirdLife Madrid 28053 Spain

British Trust for Ornithology Thetford IP242PU United Kingdom

Czech Society for Ornithology Praha CZ 150 00 Czech Republic

Department of Biology Centre for Animal Movement Research Lund University Ecology Building Lund SE 22362 Sweden

Department of Wildlife Fish and Environmental Studies Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences Umeå 90183 Sweden

Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences University of Helsinki Helsinki FI 00014 Finland

Falu kommun Falun SE 79183 Sweden

Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences University of Groningen Groningen 9747 AG The Netherlands

Italian National Ringing Centre Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale Bologna 40064 Italy

Kloetstraat 48 Melsele B 9120 Belgium

Margarethenstr 16 Kronberg 61476 Germany

Parco regionale dei Sassi di Roccamalatina Parchi e la biodiversità Emilia Centrale Modena 41124 Italy

Punkantie 58 Tuulos FI 14870 Finland

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Dryad
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