This is BirdNo.

To protect our migratory birds, it's vital that we understand their behaviors, both during

the breeding season in North America and when they migrate to the Neotropics, a region that

includes Central and South America and the Caribbean.

But as a 2023 journal article explained,

our understanding of these separate worlds is very uneven.

Historical and systemic barriers have hindered the progress

of critical research by local neotropical scientists

and conservationists for centuries.

95% of the literature is done in the north, in the breeding season.

We don't know much about what happens to those birds in the non-breeding season or during migration.

And it creates a lot of misconceptions.

Mexican ornithologist, professor and contributing author Ernesto Ruelles in Zunza

says that those misconceptions add to the dominance of northern ornithology

and limits the quality of work available to scientists in the neotropics.

With birds that do these amazing migrations and then come and breathe in a matter of a few weeks

and then start their migration again, you start looking at these

very fast-paced birds, and then you come to the tropics and you see that life is slower.

The existing paradigm is that birds must be a fast-paced organism, and we're not willing to

consider the idea that the basal state may be the slow-paced one.

Learn more about the importance of neotropical ornithology

on the new season of Bring Birds Back.

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