Data from: Tidal drift removes the need for area restricted search in foraging Atlantic puffins

• Main Authors: Bennison, Ashley, Quinn, John, Debney, Alison, Jessopp, Mark
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Fratercula arctica; foraging; Alca torda; area restricted search; energetics; Levy; Atlantic puffin; fratercula
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/5002614; https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8gj8kc3

Understanding how animals forage is a central objective in ecology. Theory suggests that where food is uniformly distributed, Brownian movement ensures maximum prey encounter rate, but when prey is patchy, the optimal strategy resembles a Lévy walk where Area Restricted Search (ARS) is interspersed with commuting between prey patches. Such movement appears ubiquitous in high trophic level marine predators. Here we report foraging and diving behaviour in a seabird with a high cost of flight, the Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica), and report a clear lack of Brownian or Levy flight and associated ARS. Instead, puffins foraged using tides to transport them through their feeding grounds. Energetic models suggest the cost of foraging trips using the drift strategy is 28-46% less than flying between patches. We suggest such alternative movement strategies are habitat-specific, but likely to be far more widespread than currently thought. Bennison et al tracking data for Atlantic puffins and razorbillsThis tracking dataset was collected from the Saltee Islands over three years, razorbills tracked in 2014 and puffins tracked in 2017 and 2018. As well as GPS data, time depth recorder (TDR) data are also supplied for two puffin deployments. 2018 puffin tracking data contains dives appended to GPS information. Tracks and TDR data are supplied as with easy to read sensible headers CSVs.Bennison et al Tracking Data.zip