Contrasting northward migration strategies and stopover use among sympatric dabbling ducks from a shared wintering region

Understanding how co-occurring migratory species differ in movement strategy is essential for predicting their responses to habitat change along flyways. Using GPS tracking data from 95 individuals of six dabbling duck species wintering in South Korea—Baikal Teal ( Sibirionetta formosa ), Northern Pintail ( Anas acuta ), Eurasian Teal ( A. crecca ), Mallard ( A. platyrhynchos ), Eurasian Wigeon ( A. penelope ), and Eastern Spot-billed Duck ( A. zonorhyncha )—we compared spring migration metrics, stopover ecology, and migratory connectivity. Distribution-specific generalized linear mixed models, with species as a fixed effect and year as a random intercept, identified interspecific differences in total migration distance, mean migration speed, maximum daily distance, maximum inter-stopover latitudinal shift, night movement ratio, and mean and maximum stopover duration, whereas migration duration did not differ. Differences in stopover number, mean inter-stopover latitudinal shift, and route straightness were weaker or model-sensitive. Northern Pintail and Baikal Teal showed the longest migrations, Baikal Teal the largest maximum daily movements, and Mallard and Eastern Spot-billed Duck shorter, lower-intensity movements. Eurasian Wigeon showed the longest stopover durations, whereas Northern Pintail and Eurasian Teal showed high observed stopover counts, indicating species-specific combinations of movement and stopover use along a multidimensional time–energy trade-off continuum. Stopover sites were concentrated along the Yellow Sea coast, northeastern China, and the southern Russian Far East. Mantel correlations were small and non-significant in the tracked samples, although nearest-neighbour indices revealed differences in local spatial structure. These findings show that dabbling ducks sharing a wintering region can adopt divergent migration strategies and stopover-network use. Conservation planning in the East Asian–Australasian Flyway should prioritize key staging areas, notably the Yellow Sea region, and the connectivity and redundancy of species-specific stopover networks.