Foraging Flights of Breeding Thick-Billed Murres (Uria lomvia) as Revealed by Bird-Borne Direction Recorders

Benvenuti, Simone Messerotti; Bonadonna, Francesco; Dall’Antonia, Luigi; Guðmundsson, Guðmundur A.

doi:10.2307/4089111

Cited by 87 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Inshore seabirds do not rely on distant food resources and usually perform short foraging trips to coastal areas close to their breeding sites, as, for instance, in Black-browed and Shy Albatrosses, or Ade´lie Penguins (Weimerskirch et al 1986, Hedd 1998, Ballard et al 2010. Some inshore species also exhibit a dual pattern of short and long trips either in duration or distance (see murres in Benvenuti et al 1998 and Gentoo Penguins in Lescroe¨l and Bost 2005). However, this dual pattern resulted from a mutually exclusive behavior, i.e., some birds conducted short trips, while others conducted long ones (depending on sex, breeding site location, and so on).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, if Sooty Shearwaters, Puffinus griseus, seem to respond to a threshold in their body condition below which they will always initiate a long foraging trip (Weimerskirch 1998 other species seem able to alter the length of foraging trips in response to the body condition of the chicks (Weimerskirch et al 2000). Although trips of bimodal durations have been widely reported in procellariiforms , 1997a, Granadeiro et al 1998, Booth et al 2000, Congdon et al 2005), the indication of dual feeding is very limited outside this taxon, with a few alcids as exceptions, such as Thick-billed Murres, Uria lomvia (note that both short and long trips have been reported for that species, but not for the same individuals; Benvenuti et al 1998) and Little Auks, Alle alle (Welcker et al 2009). Aside from Little Auks, all these species are offshore birds, foraging at great distances from their colonies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Plasticity in foraging strategies of inshore birds: how Little Penguins maintain body reserves while feeding offspring

Saraux

Robinson-Laverick

Maho

et al. 2011

Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Breeding animals face important time and energy constraints when caring for themselves and their offspring. For long-lived species, life-history theory predicts that parents should favor survival over current reproductive attempts, thus investing more into their own maintenance than the provisioning of their young. In seabirds, provisioning strategies may additionally be influenced by the distance between breeding sites and foraging areas, and offshore and inshore species should thus exhibit different strategies. Here, we examine the provisioning strategies of an inshore seabird using a long-term data set on more than 200 Little Penguins, Eudyptula minor. They alternated between two consecutive long and several short foraging trips all along chick rearing, a strategy almost never observed for inshore animals. Short trips allowed for regular provisioning of the chicks (high feeding frequency and larger meals), whereas long trips were performed when parent body mass was low and enabled them to rebuild their reserves, suggesting that adult body condition may be a key factor in initiating long trips. Inshore seabirds do use dual strategies of alternating short and long trips, but from our data, on a simpler and less flexible way than for offshore birds.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plasticity in foraging strategies of inshore birds: how Little Penguins maintain body reserves while feeding offspring

Saraux

Robinson-Laverick

Maho

et al. 2011

Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this study, we observed a large diurnal/nocturnal difference in foraging range, with birds at all three colonies conducting longer trips at night. Although there is some evidence that murres conduct both long and short trips under certain environmental conditions (Benvenuti et al, 1998;Watanuki et al, 2001), further study is required to examine differences between day and night trip distances and the variability in night behavior under different environmental conditions and among colonies at different latitudes.…”

Section: Foraging Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A previous study has shown that breeding thick-billed murres can forage up to distances of 168 km from their colony (Benvenuti et al, 1998). Bogoslof Island is an oceanic colony, surrounded by deep waters ca.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While at-sea surveys are useful for broadscale measures of abundance and foraging distribution (Clarke et al, 2003;Trathan et al, 1998), birds enumerated in these surveys can include a high proportion of non-breeding individuals , and it is impossible to determine breeding location when multiple colonies are within commuting distance. A few studies have estimated commuting distances from flight durations obtained by time-depth data loggers (Takahashi et al, 2008;Watanuki et al, 2001), but little is known about actual foraging areas and habitat use of individuals (Benvenuti et al, 1998).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Does location really matter? An inter-colony comparison of seabirds breeding at varying distances from productive oceanographic features in the Bering Sea

Harding

Paredes

Suryan

et al. 2013

Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tCentral place foragers, such as breeding seabirds, need to commute between their nests and foraging grounds, thus close proximity of the breeding colony to productive oceanographic features might be beneficial for seabird reproduction. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the at-sea foraging and breeding behavior of thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia) nesting at three colonies (Bogoslof, St. Paul, and St. George Islands) in the Bering Sea located at different distances from the productive continental shelf-break. We found that distances to feeding areas differed only during night trips among colonies. St. Paul murres foraged entirely on the shelf, whereas St. George murres commuted to the continental shelf-break at night and foraged on the shelf during the day. Bogoslof murres foraged in oceanic waters in close proximity to the colony. Murres breeding at the both Pribilof colonies spent less time attending nests and had higher levels of stress hormone corticosterone compared to murres breeding at Bogoslof, although chick-provisioning rates and fledging success were similar among the three colonies. Lower nest attendance and higher corticosterone suggest lower food availability in the Pribilof domain compared to the Bogoslof region. Murres breeding at the Pribilofs used different foraging strategies to buffer effects of food shortages on their reproduction: flight costs associated with longer distance night trips at St. George were presumably balanced by benefits of higher density and/or more lipid rich prey in the continental shelf-break regions, whereas the additional distance of St. Paul from the continental shelf-break may have outweighed any energetic gain. Murres exhibited a remarkable degree of plasticity of foraging strategies in response to changes in their food availability, but the breeding success of murres did not reflect either food limitations or the colony proximity to productive oceanographic features.

show abstract

Anatomy and histochemistry of flight muscles in a wing-propelled diving bird, the Atlantic Puffin,Fratercula arctica

Kovacs

Meyers

2000

J. Morphol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Twenty-three species within the avian family Alcidae are capable of wing-propelled flight in the air and underwater. Alcids have been viewed as Northern Hemisphere parallels to penguins, and have often been studied to see if their underwater flight comes at a cost, compromising their aerial flying ability. We examined the anatomy and histochemistry of select wing muscles (Mm. pectoralis, supracoracoideus, latissimus dorsi caudalis, coracobrachialis caudalis, triceps scapularis, and scapulohumeralis caudalis) from Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) to assess if the muscle fiber types reveal the existence of a compromise associated with "dual-medium" flight. Pectoralis was found to be proportional in size with that of nondiving species, although the supracoracoideus was proportionally larger in puffins. Muscle fiber types were largely aerobic in both muscles, with two distinct fasttwitch types demonstrable: a smaller, aerobic, moderately glycolytic population (FOg), and a larger, moderately aerobic, glycolytic population (FoG). The presence of these two fiber types in the primary flight muscles of puffins suggests that aerial and underwater flight necessitate a largely aerobic fiber complement. We suggest that alcids do not represent an adaptive compromise, but a stable adaptation for wing-propelled locomotion both in the air and underwater.

show abstract

Foraging Flights of Breeding Thick-Billed Murres (Uria lomvia) as Revealed by Bird-Borne Direction Recorders

Cited by 87 publications

References 15 publications

Plasticity in foraging strategies of inshore birds: how Little Penguins maintain body reserves while feeding offspring

Plasticity in foraging strategies of inshore birds: how Little Penguins maintain body reserves while feeding offspring

Does location really matter? An inter-colony comparison of seabirds breeding at varying distances from productive oceanographic features in the Bering Sea

Anatomy and histochemistry of flight muscles in a wing-propelled diving bird, the Atlantic Puffin,Fratercula arctica

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About