The University of Georgia announced on Apr. 7 that a new study has found the movement patterns of waterfowl, such as ducks, swans, and geese, may influence the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza in bird populations.
Understanding how birds move outside their typical migration periods could help scientists predict where bird flu, also known as H5N1, might spread next. The findings suggest that birds travel shorter distances in areas with more human activity due to abundant food, water, and shelter. This behavior may limit the broader spread of disease but can create concentrated hotspots for outbreaks.
Claire Teitelbaum, assistant unit leader with the U.S. Geological Survey's Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and lead author of the study, said: "Birds are like us. They're always responding to what's around them, whether that's food availability or disturbance from people or other animals. We can take the environment, predict how much we think birds are moving and then use that to predict where avian flu is going to go." She also explained: "If we provide enough diverse attractive habitats, these animals may want to stick around. Like humans, if you live in a suburban neighborhood where it's just single-family homes for miles and miles, you're going to have to drive miles and miles out of that area to get to work or shop. If you live in an urban center, you have everything you need right there." Teitelbaum added: "If we want to keep the flu from spreading, we might want to see what we can do to keep the birds in one place, but there's that flipside. Outbreaks happen when birds are in high density so we might have increased transmission locally... That's the underpinning: How can we link the distances that birds are moving to the distances that flu is moving?"
Researchers analyzed two decades of data covering over 4,600 waterfowl across 26 species throughout the Northern Hemisphere. They tracked daily movements during breeding and winter seasons—periods when birds regularly commute between resting and feeding areas rather than migrate long distances.
The results showed that waterfowl traveled up to six times farther through uniform landscapes like grasslands or farmlands compared with more varied environments such as wetlands or urban green spaces. In areas with significant human presence—including protected green spaces—birds often moved less than a mile within their home range.
During winter months specifically, daily commutes were more than twice as long compared with those during breeding season—a pattern consistent even when analyzing weekly movement data matching H5N1’s incubation period.
The study appears in Ecology Letters.
