Foraging strategies and facilitative interactions among common (sterna hirundo) and roseate terns (s. dougallii) in the northwest atlantic ocean

• Main Author: Goyert, Holly Franklin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: City University of New York 2013
• Subjects: Ecology|Conservation|Behavioral Sciences; Northwest Atlantic; Sterna hirundo
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3601871

Marine resources are characteristically patchy and concealed beneath the surface of a "featureless" ocean, which makes facilitative species interactions especially advantageous to seabirds. My research addresses how behavioral mechanisms accommodate prey availability, or more specifically, how common (Sterna hirundo) and roseate terns (S. dougallii ) locate and access food when it is not easily detectable. I study their foraging behavior and ecology from pre- to post-breeding, offshore in the pelagic realm (chapter 1), around the colony (chapter 2), and in nearshore waters (chapter 3). My first chapter tests the hypothesis that, as broadly-ranging seabirds, common and roseate terns forage over habitat where marine mammals and predatory fish help to find and access prey. I quantify the spatial association among foraging terns, tunas, dolphins, and their habitat, using Bayesian hierarchical models, and tests of behavioral community interactions. Facilitation explains how terns benefit from subsurface predators through local enhancement and commensal relationships: foraging tunas improve the detection and availability of prey by signaling their presence, and driving them to the surface. Chapter 2 evaluates the link between resource utilization and foraging strategy, measured by nest provisioning and patterns among foraging routes or feeding flocks. I propose that the opportunistic generalists, common terns, depend more on social cues than the specialists, roseate terns, which rely more heavily on spatial memory to find predictable prey. The results support this and suggest that increased breeding and foraging success in roseate terns relates to higher quality and abundance in their preferred prey, sandlance (Ammodytes spp.); in contrast, common terns seem to endure prey limitation through their use of local enhancement. In my third chapter, I hypothesize that habitat variability and prey availability predict interspecific differences in tern foraging. Behavioral tests and density-surface models, with distance sampling, show that foraging common and roseate terns respond positively to the distribution and abundance of each other and their preferred prey. Clearly, common and roseate terns use conspecifics, heterospecifics and subsurface predators to encounter prey via facilitation: such interactions create dynamic hotspots that need to be considered in an ecosystem approach to marine spatial planning.