ORIGINAL PAPER

• Main Authors: Øystein Varpe, Æ Torkild Tveraa
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctic Petrel; Antarctica; Catharacta maccormicki
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.560.2160; http://www.bio.uib.no/modelling/papers/Varpe_2005_Chick_survival.pdf

Abstract In birds, the characteristics of the nest site may affect reproductive success. We found that shelter is an important characteristic of the Antarctic petrel (Tha-lassoica antarctica) nests because shelter prevents chick predation. However, the benefit of shelter was counter-vailed by melt water which mainly entered well-sheltered nests. Chick survival was monitored until the chick was left unattended for the first time. Late-hatched chicks had a higher survival probability than early-hatched chicks, possibly because late hatchers swamp the pred-ator, the south polar skua (Catharacta maccormicki). Poorly sheltered nests tended to be occupied by parents with low body mass and late-hatched eggs. The results suggest that both shelter per se and parental character-istics may explain the relationship between predation risk and shelter. We need experiments to study the influence of nest site on reproductive success, and we need to map the frequency of melt water as a cause of reproductive failure.