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Read about recent developments and findings in procellariiform science and conservation relevant to the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels in ACAP Latest News.

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Individual differences from early life to senescence in the Wandering Albatross

Rémi Fay (Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de Chizé, Villiers-en-Bois, France) and colleagues have published in the journal Ecological Monographs on differences in the quality of life-history traits in the Wandering Albatross Diomedea exulans.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Although population studies have long assumed that all individuals of a given sex and age are identical, ignoring among-individual differences may strongly bias our perception of eco-evolutionary processes. Individual heterogeneity, often referred to as individual quality, has received increasing research attention in the last decades. However, there are still substantial gaps in our current knowledge. For example, there is little information on how individual heterogeneity influences various life-history traits simultaneously, and studies describing individual heterogeneity in wild populations are generally not able to jointly identify possible sources of this variation. Here, based on a mark-recapture data set of 9,685 known-aged wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans), we investigated the existence of individual quality over the whole life cycle of this species, from early-life to senescence. Using finite mixture models, we investigated the expression of individual heterogeneity in various demographic traits, and examined the origin of these among-individual differences by considering the natal environmental conditions. We found that some individuals consistently outperformed others during most of their life. At old age, however, senescence rate was stronger in males that showed high demographic performance at younger ages. Variation in individual quality seemed strongly affected by extrinsic factors experienced during the ontogenetic period. We found that individuals born in years with high population density tended to have lower performances during their lifespan, suggesting delayed density dependence effects through individual quality. Our study showed that among-individual differences could be important in structuring individual life history trajectories, with substantial consequences at higher ecological levels such as population dynamics.”

 

A Wandering Albatross at its nest, photograph by Kate Lawrence

Reference:

Fay, R., Barbraud, C., Delord, K. & Weimerskirch, H. 2017. From early-life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long-lived seabird. Ecological Monographs. doi:10.1002/ecm.1275F.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 September 2017

46 out of 50 hand-reared Laysan Albatrosses fledge from the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge over three years

A three-year project to create a new colony of Laysan Albatrosses Phoebastria immutabilis in the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge on the Hawaiian island of Oahu has been completed with a 92% fledging rate. The hand-reared chicks have come from eggs removed from the Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands on the nearby island of Kauai.

Hand-reared Laysan Albatross chicks waiting for a feed

“17 Laysan Albatross fledged from James Campbell NWR this summer. The project’s goal is to match the fledging success of wild birds, which ranges from 60 to 80 percent. The first two years saw 29 chicks fledge with relatively few issues apart from the ever-present stench of fish slurry and the nights of worry that go with raising seabird chicks from hatching to fledging. ... After three years, 46 chicks had fledged out of 50 relocations, putting the fledging rate at 92 percent - far above the fledging success of wild birds. After spending three to five years at sea, these chicks will hopefully return to the place they were raised - James Campbell NWR … and start the process of selecting a mate for breeding. If they do, the project will be deemed a success …”.

 

Hand-reared Laysan Albatross chicks keep to the shade in the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge

Read previous ALN postings on translocated albatrosses at the James Campbell NWR.

Read more here on year three of the project:

John Cooper, ACAP information Officer, 21 September 2017

DNA metabarcoding used to identify fishes in the diet of the Black-browed Albatross

Julie McInnes (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia) and colleagues have an accepted paper awaiting on-line publication in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science that uses use DNA metabarcoding of Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris faeces to identify fish prey, including bycatch species.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Almost all of the world’s fisheries overlap spatially and temporally with foraging seabirds, with impacts that range from food supplementation (through scavenging behind vessels), to resource competition and incidental mortality. The nature and extent of interactions between seabirds and fisheries vary, as does the level and efficacy of management and mitigation. Seabird dietary studies provide information on prey diversity and often identify species that are also caught in fisheries, providing evidence of linkages which can be used to improve ecosystem based management of fisheries. However, species identification of fish can be difficult with conventional dietary techniques. The black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) has a circumpolar distribution and has suffered major population declines due primarily to incidental mortality in fisheries. We use DNA metabarcoding of black-browed albatross scats to investigate their fish prey during the breeding season at six sites across their range, over two seasons. We identify the spatial and temporal diversity of fish in their diets and overlaps with fisheries operating in adjacent waters. Across all sites, 51 fish species from 33 families were identified, with 23 species contributing >10% of the proportion of samples or sequences at any site. There was extensive geographic variation but little inter-annual variability in fish species consumed. Several fish species that are not easily accessible to albatross, but are commercially harvested or by-caught, were detected in the albatross diet during the breeding season. This was particularly evident at the Falkland Islands and Iles Kerguelen where higher fishery catch amounts (or discard amounts where known) corresponded to higher occurrence of these species in diet samples. This study indicates ongoing interactions with fisheries through consumption of fishery discards, increasing the risk of seabird mortality. Breeding success was higher at sites where fisheries discards were detected in the diet, highlighting the need to minimise discarding to reduce impacts on the ecosystem. DNA metabarcoding provides a valuable non-invasive tool for assessing the fish prey of seabirds across broad geographic ranges. This provides an avenue for fishery resource managers to assess compliance of fisheries with discard policies and the level of interaction with scavenging seabirds.”

Black-browed Albatross, photograph by Aleks Terauds
 

Reference:

McInnes, J.C., Jarman, S.N., Lea, M.-A., Raymond, B., Deagle, B.E., Phillips, R.A., Catry, P., Stanworth, A., Weimerskirch, H., Kusch, A., Gras, M., Cherel, Y., Maschette, D & Alderman, R. 2017. DNA metabarcoding as a marine conservation and management tool: a circumpolar examination of fishery discards in the diet of threatened albatross. Frontiers in Marine Science doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00277.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 20 September 2017

Tracking the at-sea movements of Black-browed Albatrosses on Macquarie Island with GPS

The latest issue (June 2017, No. 32) of the Australian Antarctic Magazine, published by the Australian Antarctic Division, reports on research conducted on globally Near Threatened Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris on Macquarie Island.

The shortened article follows:

“Scientists successfully deployed miniature GPS loggers on five threatened black-browed albatross on Macquarie Island this season, to find out more about the foraging habits of the birds. Field biologists Kimberley Kliska and Penny Pascoe, successfully taped miniature GPS data loggers to the feathers on the backs of five birds. The data loggers remained on the birds for between five and 30 foraging trips. The data was [sic] downloaded from the devices once they were retrieved, enabling the team to map the foraging locations of the birds.

“We found the birds forage locally, within 200 kilometres of Macquarie Island, during the egg incubation period, highlighting the importance of the marine protected area around Macquarie Island,” Ms Kliska said.

Approximately 40 pairs of black browed albatross breed on the steep slopes of the island and biologists regularly visit the colony to record the progress of the breeding season.

Chief Investigator from the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment, Dr Rachael Alderman, said the birds are threatened by fishing and climate change, on land and at sea.

“This is the first time such high resolution GPS tracking has been done on this population,” Dr Alderman said.

“We will try and collect more data over the coming seasons to understand how foraging distribution and behaviour is [sic] varying over time, what the environmental drivers are and, importantly, how these populations may be affected by climate change.”

The data from this and other long-term albatross studies is [sic] fed into the international Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, to inform conservation measures such as reducing seabird by-catch in fisheries. Australian sub-Antarctic fisheries are closed during summer, to avoid albatross when they are foraging close to shore to feed their chicks.”

Click here to read the full illustrated account.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 19 September 2017

Modelling at-sea distribution of Black-browed Albatrosses

Petra Quillfeldt (Department of Animal Ecology and Systematics, Justus-Liebig-Universität, Giessen, Germany) and colleagues have published in the Journal of Avian Biology on influence of device accuracy and choice of algorithm on the at-sea distribution of Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Species distribution models (SDM) based on tracking data from different devices are used increasingly to explain and predict seabird distributions. However, different tracking methods provide different data resolutions, ranging from < 10 m to > 100 km. To better understand the implications of this variation, we modeled the potential distribution of black-browed albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris from South Georgia that were simultaneously equipped with a platform terminal transmitter (PTT) (high resolution) and a global location sensor (GLS) logger (coarse resolution), and measured the overlap of the respective potential distribution for a total of nine different SDM algorithms. We found slightly better model fits for the PTT than for GLS data (AUC values 0.958 ± 0.048 vs 0.95 ± 0.05) across all algorithms. The overlaps of the predicted distributions were higher between device types for the same algorithm, than among algorithms for either device type. Uncertainty arising from coarse-resolution location data is therefore lower than that associated with the modeling technique. Consequently, the choice of an appropriate algorithm appears to be more important than device type when applying SDMs to seabird tracking data. Despite their low accuracy, GLS data appear to be effective for analyzing the habitat preferences and distribution patterns of pelagic species.”

 

Black-browed Albatrosses at sea, photograph by Graham Parker

With thanks to Richard Phillips.

Reference:

Quillfeldt, P., Engler, J.O., Silk, J.R.D. & Phillips, R.A. 2017. Influence of device accuracy and choice of algorithm for species distribution modelling of seabirds: a case study using black-browed albatrosses. Journal of Avian Biology DOI: 10.1111/jav.01238.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 18 September 2017

The Agreement on the
Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels

ACAP is a multilateral agreement which seeks to conserve listed albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters by coordinating international activity to mitigate known threats to their populations.

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