Flight speed and performance of the wandering albatross with respect to wind

• Published in: Movement Ecology
• Main Authors: Richardson, Philip L., Wakefield, Ewan D., Phillips, Richard A.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2018
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; Diomedea exulans; Wandering Albatross
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/10124

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Movement Ecology 6 (2018): 3, doi:10.1186/s40462-018-0121-9. Albatrosses and other large seabirds use dynamic soaring to gain sufficient energy from the wind to travel large distances rapidly and with little apparent effort. The recent development of miniature bird-borne tracking devices now makes it possible to explore the physical and biological implications of this means of locomotion in detail. Here we use GPS tracking and concurrent reanalyzed wind speed data to model the flight performance of wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans soaring over the Southern Ocean. We investigate the extent to which flight speed and performance of albatrosses is facilitated or constrained by wind conditions encountered during foraging trips. Financial support was provided by the F. Livermore Trust, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution emeritus fund and the UK Natural Environment Research Council (grant NE/M017990/1).