Natural Phenomena
Migration
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The regular, often seasonal movement of animals between distinct locations, typically driven by the search for food, breeding sites or milder climate as conditions shift through the year. Migration takes strikingly different forms across the animal kingdom: some species travel in a single lifetime, others complete the journey only through several generations in sequence, as with the monarch butterfly, whose individuals flying south have never made the trip before and whose return north is completed by their offspring. Not every migration crosses the widest distances; the emperor penguin's annual march between open ocean feeding grounds and inland breeding colonies on Antarctic sea ice covers far less distance than the monarch's continental crossing, but is no less regular or essential to the species' survival.
Facts
PeriodicityTypically seasonal and annual, though timing, distance and even direction vary by species and by population within a species. 1 ScaleIndividual and population level, ranging from a single lifetime journey to multi-generational relay migrations such as the monarch butterfly's. 1 First DescribedDanish schoolteacher Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen began scientific bird ringing in 1899, fitting aluminum leg rings stamped with unique numbers to European starlings, the first systematic method for tracking individual migration routes and destinations rather than relying on general observation. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Demonstrated By
Estuaries are a classic corridor for migratory fish and birds moving between fresh water, the open sea and the shore.
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