Trevor MacLaurin

McGill University
Ph.D. candidate
Supervisor: Kyle Elliott
Paul A. Smith, Environment and Climate Change Canada
Start: 2026-09-01
End: 2030-09-01

Project

Dietary Flexibility and Migratory Strategy in a Community of Subarctic-Breeding Shorebirds
My research focusses on how Arctic and Subarctic-breeding shorebirds fuel two of the most demanding events in their annual cycle: a multi-thousand-kilometre migration each spring, and the egg-laying that follows almost immediately after they arrive. Most of these species are thought to rely heavily on tundra insects for both. But insect emergence is often sparse and unpredictable in the weeks after snowmelt, right when the earliest-arriving birds need food most. I'm investigating whether berries, which overwinter beneath the snow and become available the moment it melts, offer an important alternative, and whether species that rely more on this resource also show more flexibility in how and when they migrate. Using a combination of stable isotope analysis, DNA metabarcoding of fecal samples, and GPS tracking of Whimbrel, I aim to quantify how much berries contribute to shorebird diets around Hudson Bay, and to test whether that dietary flexibility helps explain differences in migratory strategy across species.

Keywords

migration, Arctic shorebirds, physiology , Dietary flexibility, stable isotopes