Current and future foraging habitat niche of a High Arctic zooplanktivorous seabird, the little auk Alle alle

• Main Authors: 3rd World Seabird Conference 2021, Jakubas, Dariusz
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Underline Science Inc. 2021
• Subjects: Ornithology; Environmental Engineering; FOS Environmental engineering; Arctic; Svalbard; Alle alle; Climate change; Dovekie; Global warming; little auk; Norwegian Polar Institute; Sea ice; Spitsbergen
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48448/ae8g-er16; https://underline.io/lecture/34830-current-and-future-foraging-habitat-niche-of-a-high-arctic-zooplanktivorous-seabird,-the-little-auk-alle-alle

Abstract: The Arctic is warming faster than other regions of the Earth. The little auk, or dovekie (Alle alle) as an endemic Arctic organism may be especially prone to climate change. It is a small zooplanktivorous seabird with breeding range restricted to the High Arctic. We modelled current and future distribution of a foraging little auks in one of the most important breeding areas, Svalbard, using a combination of GPS-tracking, satellite remote sensing and data-driven (conditional inference tree) and expert-knowledge (fuzzy logic) based techniques. We characterized environmental conditions (sea surface temperature, sea depth, presence/absence of marginal sea ice zone) at foraging positions of GPS-tracked individuals from three breeding colonies in Svalbard: one 'boreo-Arctic' located at the boundary of Low Arctic and High Arctic zones and two 'high-Arctic' colonies located in the largest breeding aggregations of this species in Svalbard on the west coast of Spitsbergen. The birds from one 'high-Arctic' colony, influenced by cold Arctic water, foraged in the shallow shelf zone near the colony. The birds from the remaining colonies foraged in a wider range of depths, in a higher sea surface temperature zone ('boreo-Arctic') or in the productive but distant marginal sea ice zone (second 'high-Arctic' colony). Given this flexible foraging behaviour and results of studies on their breeding performance, little auks may be temporarily resilient to moderate climate changes. However, our fuzzy logic models of future distribution under scenarios of increased sea surface temperature by 1oC and 2oC SST, predict losses of feeding habitat within the cost-effective range of foraging flights for the majority of little auk colonies in Svalbard. Over longer time scales negative consequences of global warming are inevitable. The actual response of little auks to future environmental conditions will depend on the range of their plasticity and pace of ecosystem changes. Authors: Dariusz Jakubas¹, Katarzyna Wojczulanis-Jakubas¹, Lech Iliszko¹, Hallvard Strøm², Lech Stempniewicz¹ ¹University of Gdansk, ²Norwegian Polar Institute