Matthew Savoca (Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, USA) and colleagues have published on-line and open access in the journal Science Advances on whether procellariform seabirds are attracted to plastic debris at sea by smell as well as by sight.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Plastic debris is ingested by hundreds of species of organisms, from zooplankton to baleen whales, but how such a diversity of consumers can mistake plastic for their natural prey is largely unknown.   The sensory mechanisms underlying plastic detection and consumption have rarely been examined within the context of sensory signals driving marine food web dynamics.  We demonstrate experimentally that marine-seasoned microplastics produce a dimethyl sulfide (DMS) signature that is also a keystone odorant for natural trophic interactions.  We further demonstrate a positive relationship between DMS responsiveness and plastic ingestion frequency using procellariiform seabirds as a model taxonomic group.  Together, these results suggest that plastic debris emits the scent of a marine infochemical, creating an olfactory trap for susceptible marine wildlife.”

Light-mantled Sooty Albatrosses, photograph by Aleks Terauds

Read more here.

Reference:

Savoca, M.S., Wohlfeil, M.E., Ebeler, S.E. & Nevitt, G.A. 2016.  Marine plastic debris emits a keystone infochemical for olfactory foraging seabirds.  Science Advances 2(11)  DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600395.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 11 November 2016

BirdLife Malta is looking for a voluntary assistant to join its international seabird team in the Maltese Islands.

The volunteer will assist in ongoing monitoring and research activities with two ACAP potential candidate species, the Yelkouan Puffinus yelkouan and the Scopoli's Calonectris diomedea Shearwaters and on the Mediterranean Storm Petrel Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis.

Volunteer assistants will be based in BirdLife Malta’s offices and in Natura 2000 sites.  Accommodation and allowances will be provided.

Scopoli's Shearwater on the wing, photograph by 'Pep' Acos 

Applications close on 27 November 2016. Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 10 November 2016

Applications are invited from previously disadvantaged South African citizens for the above full-time MSc research scholarship at the University of Cape Town’s Percy FitzPatrick Institute, a world-renowned, national Centre of Excellence (CoE) in ornithological research with a strong emphasis on postgraduate studies (click here).

The successful applicant will focus on understanding how breeding performance interacts with the extent of moult in large procellariiform seabirds.  The candidate will be supported and supervised by the Fitztitute’s Director, Peter Ryan.

Examining a Tristan Albatross wing on Gough Island, photograph from the FitzPatrick Institute

“Moult is one of the major annual constraints faced by birds, and large birds in particular struggle to accommodate moult in their annual cycle because the rate of feather growth scales only weakly with body size. This creates an evolutionary dilemma for large procellariiform seabirds such as albatrosses and giant petrels which either have to overlap moulting with breeding, potentially compromising their ability to breed successfully, or only replace a subset of feathers each year, potentially leading to an accumulation of old feathers.  This conflict might lead to trade-offs between breeding and moulting, which have been inferred for North Pacific albatrosses, but not fully explored in Southern Ocean species.  In addition, most focus to date has been on primary moult patterns in these birds, but they have many more secondaries than primaries, and their strategies to replace their secondaries also warrant investigating.  The successful candidate will use photographic records of moult status of breeding albatrosses and giant petrels from Marion and Gough Islands to address these questions.”

The closing date for applications is 30 November 2016.  Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 09 November 2016

Carolina Hospitaleche (CONICET, La Plata, Argentina) and Javier Gelfo have published in the journal Historical Biology on an old bird bone from Antarctica.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“New remains from the La Meseta (Thanetian – Lutetian) and Submeseta (Lutetian – Rupelian) formations (Seymour Island, Antarctica) are tentatively assigned to Diomedeidae and Procellariidae (Procellariiformes).  Based on the fossil record and several analyses that attempt to explain the evolutionary patterns of Diomedeidae, Notoleptos giglii gen. et sp. nov., based on a small tarsometatarsus, was an ancestral form that lived in Antarctica before the rise of large-sized albatrosses.  Subsequent environmental cooling since the late Oligocene could have selected against small body size, to the detriment of small-sized albatrosses like Notoleptos, thus favoring large body size and setting the stage for the development of the specialized albatross flight.”

Reference:

Hospitaleche, C.A. & Gelfo, J.N. 2016.  Procellariiform remains and a new species from the latest Eocene of Antarctica.  Historical Biology doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2016.1238470.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 08 November 2016