Decoupling of emigration timing and skill acquisition in a saturated population of golden eagles

Abstract

Many young animals must gain independence from parental care by acquiring the necessary skills for survival. Thus, the rate of skill acquisition can predict how long juveniles remain with their parents before emigrating from the natal territory. Yet in some systems, young animals acquire adult-like skills and the capacity to be independent long before they emigrate. This raises the question of why the timing of emigration decouples from the rate of skill acquisition, resulting in extended parental care. We addressed this by leveraging GPS tracking data from juvenile golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos), which learn to fly and to hunt while remaining with their parents for 61-283 days after fledging. Young golden eagles often go on excursions without their parents outside of their natal territories before emigration. We expected flight performance to predict the timing of excursions better than the timing of emigration, which should be more influenced by external factors. In a set of time-to-event models, we predicted the rate of excursions and of emigration using metrics of soaring flight performance or of daily movement. Contrary to our prediction, we found that soaring performance failed to predict the rate of either excursions or emigration, whereas daily movement predicted both rates, but inconsistently. This was likely because those coarser metrics captured motivation and weather in addition to flight skills. Thus external factors seem more likely to explain the timing of independence and internal development--in this case of flight skills--may be completed quickly. Juveniles may delay emigration not due to lack of skill, but because the costs of leaving parental care outweigh the benefits. The difference we discovered between when individuals were capable of independence and when they committed to it may obscure the more general link between skill acquisition and the end of parental care in other systems as well.