Wandering albatrosses exert high take-off effort only when both wind and waves are gentle
The relationship between the environment and marine animal small-scale behavior is not fully understood. This is largely due to the difficulty in obtaining environmental datasets with a high spatiotemporal precision. The problem is particularly pertinent in assessing the influence of environmental f...
Published in: | eLife |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
2023
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87016 https://doaj.org/article/da0f0ed175514593a049b4a9cde4d109 |
Summary: | The relationship between the environment and marine animal small-scale behavior is not fully understood. This is largely due to the difficulty in obtaining environmental datasets with a high spatiotemporal precision. The problem is particularly pertinent in assessing the influence of environmental factors in rapid, high energy-consuming behavior such as seabird take-off. To fill the gaps in the existing environmental datasets, we employed novel techniques using animal-borne sensors with motion records to estimate wind and ocean wave parameters and evaluated their influence on wandering albatross take-off patterns. Measurements revealed that wind speed and wave heights experienced by wandering albatrosses during take-off ranged from 0.7 to 15.4 m/s and 1.6 to 6.4 m, respectively. The four indices measured (flapping number, frequency, sea surface running speed, and duration) also varied with the environmental conditions (e.g., flapping number varied from 0 to over 20). Importantly, take-off was easier under higher wave conditions than under lower wave conditions at a constant wind speed, and take-off effort increased only when both wind and waves were gentle. Our data suggest that both ocean waves and winds play important roles for albatross take-off and advances our current understanding of albatross flight mechanisms. |
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