Vagrancy in Motion: Shifting from Novelty to Ecological Importance

For the past century, however, the prevailing idea that vagrants are aberrant has left vagrancy largely unexplored and understudied. Instead, a number of conflicting theories have been proposed to explain how vagrancy occurs, with no clear consensus, and insufficient evidence to support them. Additionally, lack of direct studies on vagrants limits what we can reveal about mechanisms of vagrancy, leaving major gaps in our understanding of this behavior.

Dr. Lucinda Zawadzki has been studying vagrancy since 2014 in an effort to shift the conversation on vagrancy from one of novelty and aberrance, to one of ecological importance. This talk will explore the contributions that Dr. Zawadzki and her colleagues have made to the field, highlighting those that seek to improve our understanding of vagrancy from both a mechanistic and behavioral perspective. Through an array of techniques, from computational modelling, to field experimentation, and stable isotope analysis, results of this work challenge the idea that vagrants are aberrant, and instead suggests vagrancy is an expected behavior tied to reproductive success and directed exploratory movements. That is, vagrancy may not be “vagrancy” at all, but simply movement to be expected within a normal life cycle. Efforts to understand vagrancy are timely as we seek to quantify the extent of species’ ranges and understand how species will respond and adapt when faced with severe climatic and anthropomorphic change.