Video_S1

Supplementary_information

Yuuki Watanabe

George Perry

eLife assessment
This important study substantially advances our understanding of energy landscapes and their link to animal ontogeny. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with high-throughput telemetry data and advanced track segmentation methods used to develop and map energy landscapes. The work will be of broad interest to animal ecologists.

anonymous

Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
Summary:
The authors propose that the energy landscape of animals can be thought of in the same way as the fundamental versus realized niche concept in ecology. Namely, animals will use a subset of the fundamental energy landscape due to a variety of factors. The authors then show that the realized energy landscape of eagles increases with age as the animals are better able to use the energy landscape.
Strengths:
This is a very interesting idea and that adds significantly to the energy landscape framework. They provide convincing evidence that the available regions used by birds increase with size.
Review of revised version:
The authors have addressed all my comments and concerns. This is a really nice and important manuscript. I have one minor suggestion: Line 74-85: when discussing the effect of ontogeny, the authors give examples of how these may change due to improved cognition and memory. I would recommend they also give examples of how these may change with morphology (e.g. change in wing or fin relative area, buoyancy in sharks etc) should also be included. Most growth in fish for example is allometric so the relative measures of area of fins to body size should also change.
This is of course up to the authors but it would highlight how their study is applicable to many other systems beyond just birds (even though morphology is of little importance for their eagles).

Reviewer #2 (Public Review):
Summary:
With this work, the authors tried to expand and integrate the concept of realized niche in the context of movement ecology by using fine-scale GPS data of 55 juvenile Golden eagles in the Alps. Authors found that ontogenic changes influence the percentage of area flyable to the eagles as individuals exploit better geographic uplifts that allow them to reduce the cost of transport.
Strengths:
Authors made insightful work linking changes in ontogeny and energy landscapes in large soaring birds that may not only advance the understanding of how changes in the life cycle affect the exploitability of aerial space but also offer valuable tools for the management and conservation of large soaring species in the changing world.
Weaknesses:
Future research may test the applicability of the present work by including more individuals and/or other species from other study areas.

Developmental stage shapes the realized energy landscape for a flight specialist

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