This article served to explain a study conducted by scientists in Canada who wanted to better understand the purpose of long-distance migration by nesting birds. They experimented with artificial nests at different arctic latitudes to determine whether latitude had any effect on the rate of predation experienced by the nests. They determined that nest locations at higher latitudes experienced less predation, which may be a factor in why birds travel such long distances to nest.
The strongest part of this paper is how it ties the theory of evolution with the real-world concept of migration for nesting. Evolution is no longer digging up fossils to create a link between today and yesterday, but instead it has become a study of how modern phenomena (such as migration) are necessary to survival. Its weakness is that the results are not fully detailed, since the reader is only able to view graphs of nest survival robabilities and average failure rates, as opposed to actual survival and failure rates. Therefore, readers are not able to determine if any mathematical or statistical mistakes were made in the process of conducting this experiment, and must therefore rely on what the authors have to say instead of drawing conclusions for themselves.
This paper is an excellent display of evolution in a modern sense. It shows how evolution is important to all aspects of biology and ecology through its description of the migration phenomenon. The paper suffers from its lack of raw data from which extrapolations were made, leaving the readers nothing but to believe what the authors have suggested probably a result of creating a paper short enough to be published in Science magazine.
This paper was used in class to introduce the concept of evolution in modern biology, evidenced in this study because migratory birds have evolved to fly long distances in order to protect their species and give their reproductive abilities the highest chance of success.
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