Circular Bedforms Due to Pit Foraging of Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus in a Back-Barrier Intertidal Habitat

Abstract

The Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus roseus is known as an ecosystem engineer, rearranging sediment in peculiar bedforms as a consequence of its filter-feeding behaviour. In recent decades, the populations of the Greater Flamingo have notably increased, and now the species is one of the most abundant waterbirds in Mediterranean wetlands. Owing to its range expansion, it inhabits and exploits new and suitable foraging sites detectable by foraging structures left on the sediment. There are few images of the foraging morphologies in the literature, possibly due to their ephemeral nature and difficulty in detecting them. In this manuscript, we present a very detailed UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) image of an aggregate of pit foraging structures of Greater Flamingo discovered on a back-barrier washover fan in the Marano and Grado Lagoon (Northern Adriatic, Italy).

Quantifying Transgressive Coastal Changes Using UAVs: Dune Migration, Overwash Recovery, and Barrier Flooding Assessment and Interferences with Human and Natural Assets

“…Barrier islands have a notable naturalistic value for their vegetation richness and because they are the ideal habitat for many bird species, both resident and migratory [53]. New washover deposits are ecologically important as they increase habitat diversity and sustain more or less endangered species of birds [54][55][56][57].…”

“…As several authors [38,45,76] have pointed out, these sandy deposits can represent a remarkably important part of the barrier island in terms of sedimentary budget and extent, allowing the barrier to be preserved during transgressive trends. The sandy structure of the washover fan currently exists as a relict landform in the backbarrier area; this condition has allowed the generation of a new habitat suitable as foraging sites for populations of the Greater Flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus), as discovered by [57], demonstrating the importance of episodic events, such as storm surges, in generating new landforms and habitats that can support biodiversity in lagoon ecosystems.…”