Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction
Narrow foraging specialization may increase the vulnerability of marine predators to climate change. The red-legged kittiwake (Rissa brevirostris) is endemic to the Bering Sea and has experienced drastic population fluctuations in recent decades, presumably due to climate-driven changes in food reso...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4605634 2023-05-15T15:43:41+02:00 Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction Kokubun, Nobuo Yamamoto, Takashi Kikuchi, Dale M. Kitaysky, Alexander Takahashi, Akinori 2015-10-14 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605634/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26465335 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605634/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26465335 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited CC-BY Research Article Text 2015 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 2015-11-01T01:15:43Z Narrow foraging specialization may increase the vulnerability of marine predators to climate change. The red-legged kittiwake (Rissa brevirostris) is endemic to the Bering Sea and has experienced drastic population fluctuations in recent decades, presumably due to climate-driven changes in food resources. Red-legged kittiwakes are presumed to be a nocturnal surface-foraging seabird that feed almost entirely on deep water Myctophidae fishes. However, there is little empirical evidence confirming their nocturnal foraging activity during the breeding season. This study investigated the foraging behavior of red-legged kittiwakes by combining GPS tracking, accelerometry, and dietary analyses at the world’s largest breeding colony of red-legged kittiwakes on St. George I. GPS tracking of 5 individuals revealed that 82.5% of non-flight behavior (including foraging and resting) occurred over the ocean basin (bottom depth >1,000 m). Acceleration data from 4 birds showed three types of behaviors during foraging trips: (1) flight, characterized by regular wing flapping, (2) resting on water, characterized by non-active behavior, and (3) foraging, when wing flapping was irregular. The proportions of both foraging and resting behaviors were higher at night (14.1 ± 7.1% and 20.8 ± 14.3%) compared to those during the day (6.5 ± 3.0% and 1.7 ± 2.7%). The mean duration of foraging (2.4 ± 2.9 min) was shorter than that of flight between prey patches (24.2 ± 53.1 min). Dietary analyses confirmed myctophids as the dominant prey (100% by occurrence and 98.4 ± 2.4% by wet-weight). Although the sample size was limited, these results suggest that breeding red-legged kittiwakes concentrated their foraging on myctophids available at the surface during nighttime in deep water regions. We propose that the diel patterns and ephemeral nature of their foraging activity reflected the availability of myctophids. Such foraging specialization may exacerbate the vulnerability of red-legged kittiwakes to climate change in the Bering Sea. Text Bering Sea PubMed Central (PMC) Bering Sea PLOS ONE 10 10 e0138850 |
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Research Article Kokubun, Nobuo Yamamoto, Takashi Kikuchi, Dale M. Kitaysky, Alexander Takahashi, Akinori Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
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Research Article |
description |
Narrow foraging specialization may increase the vulnerability of marine predators to climate change. The red-legged kittiwake (Rissa brevirostris) is endemic to the Bering Sea and has experienced drastic population fluctuations in recent decades, presumably due to climate-driven changes in food resources. Red-legged kittiwakes are presumed to be a nocturnal surface-foraging seabird that feed almost entirely on deep water Myctophidae fishes. However, there is little empirical evidence confirming their nocturnal foraging activity during the breeding season. This study investigated the foraging behavior of red-legged kittiwakes by combining GPS tracking, accelerometry, and dietary analyses at the world’s largest breeding colony of red-legged kittiwakes on St. George I. GPS tracking of 5 individuals revealed that 82.5% of non-flight behavior (including foraging and resting) occurred over the ocean basin (bottom depth >1,000 m). Acceleration data from 4 birds showed three types of behaviors during foraging trips: (1) flight, characterized by regular wing flapping, (2) resting on water, characterized by non-active behavior, and (3) foraging, when wing flapping was irregular. The proportions of both foraging and resting behaviors were higher at night (14.1 ± 7.1% and 20.8 ± 14.3%) compared to those during the day (6.5 ± 3.0% and 1.7 ± 2.7%). The mean duration of foraging (2.4 ± 2.9 min) was shorter than that of flight between prey patches (24.2 ± 53.1 min). Dietary analyses confirmed myctophids as the dominant prey (100% by occurrence and 98.4 ± 2.4% by wet-weight). Although the sample size was limited, these results suggest that breeding red-legged kittiwakes concentrated their foraging on myctophids available at the surface during nighttime in deep water regions. We propose that the diel patterns and ephemeral nature of their foraging activity reflected the availability of myctophids. Such foraging specialization may exacerbate the vulnerability of red-legged kittiwakes to climate change in the Bering Sea. |
format |
Text |
author |
Kokubun, Nobuo Yamamoto, Takashi Kikuchi, Dale M. Kitaysky, Alexander Takahashi, Akinori |
author_facet |
Kokubun, Nobuo Yamamoto, Takashi Kikuchi, Dale M. Kitaysky, Alexander Takahashi, Akinori |
author_sort |
Kokubun, Nobuo |
title |
Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
title_short |
Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
title_full |
Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
title_fullStr |
Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
title_full_unstemmed |
Nocturnal Foraging by Red-Legged Kittiwakes, a Surface Feeding Seabird That Relies on Deep Water Prey During Reproduction |
title_sort |
nocturnal foraging by red-legged kittiwakes, a surface feeding seabird that relies on deep water prey during reproduction |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605634/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26465335 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 |
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Bering Sea |
geographic_facet |
Bering Sea |
genre |
Bering Sea |
genre_facet |
Bering Sea |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605634/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26465335 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138850 |
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PLOS ONE |
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10 |
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e0138850 |
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