Movement ecology in pelagic seabirds

• Main Author: Zajková, Zuzana
• Other Authors: González-Solís, Jacob, Bartumeus Ferré, Frederic, Universitat de Barcelona. Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat de Barcelona 2020
• Subjects: Migració d'ocells; Migración de aves; Birds migration; Ocells marins; Aves marinas; Sea birds; Etologia; Etología; Animal behavior; Serveis de geolocalització; Servicios de geolocalización; Location-based services; Ciències Experimentals i Matemàtiques; 574; Common tern; North Atlantic; Sterna hirundo
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10803/668688

Movement is a fundamental component of behaviour and thus both are inextricably linked. Variation in movement patterns usually reflects different behaviours, including those most glaring, such as foraging, dispersal, migration, social interaction, mate search or escaping from predators. The way individuals allocate their time budget to different behaviours within circadian rhythm and over the annual life cycle will ultimately provide knowledge about evolutionary processes and adaptive capacity, also important to proper conservation actions of endangered species. Among highly mobile marine megafauna, seabirds represent suitable model species to address key questions about movement and behaviour. The study of year-round movements of seabirds has been addressed over the last 20 years with the wide deployment of light-level geolocators equipped with saltwater immersion sensors. However, wet-dry data provided by such loggers seem underused so far despite their usefulness to provide important insights on a variety of dimensions of seabird ecology. The main aim of this thesis was to provide new insights into the factors shaping seabird behaviour. The thesis encompasses several aspects of seabird at-sea ecology of 4 different species spread over the Atlantic Ocean: Boyd’s shearwater (Puffinus boydi), Common tern (Sterna hirundo), Atlantic petrel (Pterodroma incerta) and Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris borealis). In Chapter 1 we reveal the timing of major events over the annual life cycle, migratory routes and place on the map the non-breeding areas of a little-known tropical seabird endemic to Cape Verde Islands, the Boyd’s Shearwater. We show that Boyd's shearwaters perform longitudinal migrations to the oligotrophic central North Atlantic Ocean for the non-breeding season, in contrast with closely-related taxa that rely on most productive waters. In Chapter 2, we show that Common terns breeding in continental Europe spread over the West African coast for wintering, but females winter further north and use offshore ...