Coping with the commute: behavioural responses to wind conditions in a foraging seabird ...
Movement is a necessary yet energetically expensive process for motile animals. Yet how individuals modify their behaviour to take advantage of environmental conditions and hence optimise energetic costs during movement remains poorly understood. This is especially true for animals that move through...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bvvj https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.tqjq2bvvj |
| Summary: | Movement is a necessary yet energetically expensive process for motile animals. Yet how individuals modify their behaviour to take advantage of environmental conditions and hence optimise energetic costs during movement remains poorly understood. This is especially true for animals that move through environments where they cannot easily be observed. We examined the behaviour during commuting flights of black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla breeding on Middleton Island, Alaska in relation to wind conditions they face. By simultaneously deploying GPS and accelerometer devices on incubating birds we were able to quantify the timing, destination, course and speed of flights during commutes to foraging patches, as well as how wing beat frequency and strength relate to flight speeds. We found that kittiwakes did not preferentially fly in certain wind conditions. However, once in the air they exhibited plasticity by increasing their air speed (the speed at which they fly relative to the wind) when travelling ... : Accelerometry and GPS data from breeding kittiwakes on MIddleton Island, Alaska. Data have been processed to combine GPS and accelerometry and to assign behaviours using the methods described in the paper. ... |
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