Priorities for Future Research

Although ibises are one of the most conspicuous wetland species in North America, and are frequently used as bio-indicators, we still have a poor understanding of their within-year movements and connectivity between habitats.  Better descriptions of links between breeding colony sites and foraging areas, particularly during the onset of breeding and the chick period, would be helpful to inform both the nature and spatial scale of appropriate management actions.

Similarly, we know very little about patterns of White Ibis movements between years, especially in areas outside the southeastern USA.  Better descriptions of the spatial scale and periodicity of inter-annual shifts in breeding locations (and the underlying factors that cause these movements) would be helpful to understand population regulation, to interpret regional population trends, and to develop regional water management strategies.  Also interesting and useful to understand would be the connectivity between Caribbean populations and populations in the se. USA, and perhaps even South American.   

We understand little about the developmental ontogeny of behavior in this species, although current studies of captive birds may give us new insights (P. Frederick).  Only recently have studies begun to address the evolution of behavioral and morphological features in this species.  Continuing research on ibis social structure, behavioral ecology, and evolution of interspecies relationships would be interesting. 
   
The difficulty in estimating sizes of large breeding aggregations of ibises continues to be an impediment to understanding population dynamics and regulation in this species.  Of the various kinds of bias in estimation, breeding asynchrony probably produces the largest error. While the effects of asynchrony and overlapping starts and failures within a colony can be estimated to help produce counts of total nest starts, it is unclear how often ibises re-nest in the wild following either failure or successful nesting. Propensity to re-nest therefore seems to be a key missing parameter in our ability to accurately estimate population size in this species.

Similarly, our ability to estimate the U.S. population is severely hampered by the lack of coordinated surveys of colonies throughout the region; in the past century there have been fewer than 5 opportunities to do this with any confidence. The extreme lack of philopatry in this species, and its propensity for rapid intra-regional movements between breeding sites, makes simultaneous, region-wide survey effort a necessity for managing the population.  

Existing research strongly indicates that very large numbers of ibises are able to quickly recruit to very dense food resources distributed across hundreds of kilometers of range.  Yet is it unclear how these birds are able to do this; an understanding of the  cues involved is probably critical for conserving productive wetlands, understanding the scale and type of management conducive to this species, and avoiding the creation of ecological traps.