A colonial-nesting seabird shows no heart-rate response to drone-based population surveys

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Erica A. Geldart, Andrew F. Barnas, Christina A. D. Semeniuk, H. Grant Gilchrist, Christopher M. Harris, Oliver P. Love
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Portfolio 2022
• Subjects: Medicine; R; Science; Q; Common Eider; Somateria mollissima
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22492-7; https://doaj.org/article/1587916f98e84cd28d19c905742780da

Abstract Aerial drones are increasingly being used as tools for ecological research and wildlife monitoring in hard-to-access study systems, such as in studies of colonial-nesting birds. Despite their many advantages over traditional survey methods, there remains concerns about possible disturbance effects that standard drone survey protocols may have on bird colonies. There is a particular gap in the study of their influence on physiological measures of stress. We measured heart rates of incubating female common eider ducks (Somateria mollissima) to determine whether our drone-based population survey affected them. To do so, we used heart-rate recorders placed in nests to quantify their heart rate in response to a quadcopter drone flying transects 30 m above the nesting colony. Eider heart rate did not change from baseline (measured in the absence of drone survey flights) by a drone flying at a fixed altitude and varying horizontal distances from the bird. Our findings suggest that carefully planned drone-based surveys of focal species have the potential to be carried out without causing physiological impacts among colonial-nesting eiders.