Overview

• Resident birds showed higher survival and breeding early in adulthood but experienced roughly 40% faster late-life senescence than migrants.
• The onset of aging occurred at about 20.4 years in residents versus 21.9 years in migratory birds, indicating a later start to decline for migrants.
• Migrants incurred early-life costs, including higher mortality and lower breeding rates, yet showed slower increases in death risk and milder reproductive decline with age.
• The findings draw on more than four decades of individual-based data from Tour du Valat’s Camargue ringing program tracking 1,840 greater flamingos across the Mediterranean.
• The authors present migration as a behavioral driver of life-history trade-offs and caution that the results should not be directly applied to humans.