Early-life foraging: Behavioral responses of newly fledged albatrosses to environmental conditions

• Published in: Ecology and Evolution
• Main Authors: de Grissac, Sophie, Bartumeus, Frederic, Cox, Samantha L., Weimerskirch, Henri
• Other Authors: Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé - UMR 7372 (CEBC), La Rochelle Université (ULR)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE), ICREA-Movement Ecology Laboratory (CEAB-CSIC), CREAF, Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB-CSIC) Spain, Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB-CSIC)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2017
• Subjects: ecology; juveniles; learning; seabirds; tracking; Diomedea exulans; [SDE]Environmental Sciences; Wandering Albatross
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01571999; https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.3210

International audience In order to survive and later recruit into a population, juvenile animals need to acquireresources through the use of innate and/or learnt behaviors in an environment new tothem. For far-rangingmarine species, such as the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans,this is particularly challenging as individuals need to be able to rapidly adapt andoptimize their movement strategies in response to the highly dynamic and heterogeneousnature of their open-oceanpelagic habitats. Critical to this is the developmentand flexibility of dispersal and exploratory behaviors. Here, we examine the movementsof eight juvenile wandering albatrosses, tracked using GPS/Argos satellitetransmitters for eight months following fledging, and compare these to the trajectoriesof 17 adults to assess differences and similarities in behavioral strategies through time.Behavioral clustering algorithms (Expectation Maximization binary Clustering) werecombined with multinomial regression analyses to investigate changes in behavioralmode probabilities over time, and how these may be influenced by variations in dayduration and in biophysical oceanographic conditions. We found that juveniles appearedto quickly acquire the same large-scalebehavioral strategies as those employedby adults, although generally more time was spent resting at night. Moreover, individualswere able to detect and exploit specific oceanographic features in a mannersimilar to that observed in adults. Together, the results of this study suggest that whileshortly after fledging juvenile wandering albatrosses are able to employ similar foragingstrategies to those observed in adults, additional skills need to be acquired duringthe immature period before the efficiency of these behaviors matches that of adults.