Arctic tern migration : from individual variation to common flyways of trans-equatorial seabirds ...

• Main Author: Wong, Joanna Bao-Zhung
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2021
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Arctic; Arctic tern; Climate change; Greenland; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0396330; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0396330

Arctic terns are iconic seabirds, famous for annual migrations between the Arctic and Antarctic. Recent assessment suggests they are one of the most vulnerable seabirds to climate change. Its wide geographical range hinders the detection of hazards faced by the species during its annual bi-hemispheric movements. Although Arctic terns breed in the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coasts of North America, few tracking studies have been conducted on North American Arctic terns, and none in Canada, which represents a significant proportion of their circumpolar breeding range. Using light-level geolocators, I tracked 53 Arctic terns from 5 breeding colonies across a wide latitudinal and longitudinal range within North America. In Chapter 2, I compared the routes taken by terns in our study to those previously tracked from Greenland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Maine (USA), and Alaska (USA). Most Arctic terns tracked globally used one of three southbound migration routes: 1) Atlantic West Africa; 2) Atlantic ...