Why is wing-spreading behaviour absent in blue-eyed shags?

• Published in: Animal Behaviour
• Main Authors: Cook, Timothée R., Leblanc, Guillaume
• Other Authors: Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé (CEBC), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2007
• Subjects: [SDE.BE]Environmental Sciences/Biodiversity and Ecology; [SDE.ES]Environmental Sciences/Environmental and Society; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Antarctic Peninsula; Patagonia; New Zealand; Orta; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-00182823; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2006.11.024

International audience Wing spreading is a general behaviour in cormorants, and has been described worldwide in most species (Orta 1992). Yet, this behaviour is missing (with some exceptions, see below) in the species belonging to the so-called ‘blueeyed shag complex' (Bernstein & Maxson 1981), hereafter referred to as ‘the complex', a group of cormorants living on the coasts and islands of the waters of the Southern Ocean between roughly 40S and 70S latitude (Patagonia, Antarctic Peninsula, subAntarctic Islands, New Zealand) and comprising 13 species that have close morphological similarities (Siegel-Causey 1988).