ORIGINAL PAPER

• Main Authors: Marie Nevoux, Æ Christophe Barbraud
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Austral; Austral Ocean; Kerguelen; Kerguelen Islands; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.570.4527; http://www.cebc.cnrs.fr/publipdf/2006/NPB29.pdf

Abstract Understanding the effects of environmental variations on ecosystems is a major topic in ecology. In this study, we estimated demographic parameters of a seabird population, the thin-billed prion (Pachyptila belcheri) at Kerguelen Islands, and then tested for rela-tionships with inter-annual variations of climatic indices, using long-term capture–recapture data. The annual adult survival probability was 0.825±0.009 and the breeding success was 0.519±0.090. Sea surface temper-ature anomalies were negatively related with breeding success. By contrast, winter sea ice concentration in the Antarctic seasonal ice zone seemed to negatively influ-ence adult survival. This suggests a connection between sub-Antarctic and Antarctic ecosystems. The actual context of large climatic changes in the Austral Ocean seems to explain a large part of the decreasing trends observed for both the breeding success and the adult survival. Thus, a decrease of the population size of thin-billed prions at Kerguelen could be strongly suspected in the near future.