From Newsgroup: talk.origins

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-flamingos-reveal-secret-aging.html

This paper probably should not have been published without population
genetic data. They claim that migration extends reproductive life
expectancy by around a year and a half. The migratory population
reproduces longer.

The issue seems to be that they did not treat the populations as
distinct, probably, because they breed in the same lagoon. This
research got published in PNAS.

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-flamingos-reveal-secret-aging.html

The PNAS paper is paywalled. It may seem strange, but they did not do population genetic analysis on these flamingos.

They collected phenotypic data, but not genetic data. These are likely genetically distinct populations since sedentary breed with sedentary
and migrants breed with other migrants because sendentary birds are
together all year long, and parents lead their brood off on migration.
If they did the genetics they would likely find that they are dealing
with two populations. There would be selection for age related
phenotypes because yearling migratory birds are led by the older birds (usually their parents, and join into larger flocks), and birds learn migratory routes and stopovers from the older birds.

They are likely dealing with a genetic difference, but they didn't do
the analysis to figure it out. Their numbers are skewed and likely
subject to data collection bias. Resident breeding data was based on
1357 individuals (>90% of winter sightings in France) and only 237
individual migrant breeders (>90% of their winter sightings outside of France). They could have biased their data by considering reproductive attempts for birds that were around long enough to collect enough
sightings outside of France to be included in the analysis (they had to
have, at least 9 winter sightings outside of France).

Ron Okimoto

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