The impact of demographic and environmental drivers on the Atlantic puffin populations: a multi-colony perspective

• Main Authors: 3rd World Seabird Conference 2021, Reiertsen, Tone
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Underline Science Inc. 2021
• Subjects: Climate Change; Ecosystem; Ecology; FOS Biological sciences; Animal Science; Genomics; Norway; Atlantic puffin; Iceland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48448/dwzv-0367; https://underline.io/lecture/34908-the-impact-of-demographic-and-environmental-drivers-on-the-atlantic-puffin-populations-a-multi-colony-perspective

Abstract: Disentangling the roles of different intrinsic and environmental factors in driving seabird population changes in a large-scale perspective is highly important in a rapidly changing world. For seabirds such studies are rare. Finding the main drivers behind adult survival and population change, are important since many seabird species are threatened. Unravelling the role of different factors of climate change, such as ocean warming and associated shifts in prey availability, and extreme weather and storms events which are known to cause mass mortality, and thus represent an additional and potentially growing threat given the predicted increase in the frequency of such events are also important. Yet, there may be remarkable variation among populations in terms of how climate is having an effect due to spatio-temporal variation in the birds' distribution as well as the physical effects of climate change. As a consequence, the demographic traits that drive population changes may vary among populations. In this study we combine demographic (productivity and survival rates) and population trend data from nine North-Atlantic puffin colonies from the UK, Iceland and Norway with parallel data on environmental conditions in order to identify key drivers of population changes. Information from the seabird tracking programme SEATRACK was used to identify key non-breeding areas for each of the study colonies, enabling environmental covariates likely to be associated with overwinter survival (storm tracks, SST, large-scale climate indices and oceanographic factors) to be extracted for each population. We used multi-state CMR analysis, LTRE analysis and population modelling, to reveal some key ecological processes that underpin the relationship between puffins and their environment. Understanding these relationships is crucial when assessing how and where management actions could be put in place, and should be maintained as an integrated part of our knowledge base to support the future management of threatened seabirds. Authors: Tone Kristin Reiertsen¹ ¹Norwegian Institute for Nature Research