During the egg swap, all eggs get "candled" for fertility

The annual egg-swap exercise has taken place once more on the Hawaiian island of Kauai by the environmental NGO Pacific Rim Conservation who write on their Facebook page:  “The week before Christmas is always a busy one for us.  During that week we receive up to 45 Laysan Albatross [Phoebastria immutabilis] eggs from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, where the adults nest next to an aircraft runway.  Since large birds and large planes are a bad combination, we are given the eggs, and then they are placed in wild "foster nests" across Kauai and Oahu whose natural eggs have died.  We determine whether eggs are alive by candling them and looking for the embryo.

Egg swap in action on Oahu; photographs from Pacific Rim Conservation

Watch two short video clips by Hob Osterlund of Allene Henderson of Pacific Rim Conservation replacing a fertile egg after candling and replacing an infertile egg with a fertile one

https://www.facebook.com/hob.osterlund/videos/458034985868200

https://www.facebook.com/hob.osterlund/videos/410293000793815

Access previous egg swap posts here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 24 December 2021

2021-12-24 00:00:00

Wisdom (Red Z333) on her nest site

Wisdom, the female Laysan Albatross Phoebastria immutabilis, who is the world’s oldest known banded wild bird, has been seen back on the USA’s Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the North Pacific.  With an estimated minimum age of 70, she has now reached her eighth decade (click here).  Wisdom was first seen at her nest usual nest site on the atoll’s Sand Island -on 26 November, one day earlier than in 2020.  The last sighting of Wisdom around her nest cup was made on 5 December.

Wisdom does a wing stretch, photographs by Dragana Connaughton, Schoolyard Films

“There have been no observations of Akeakamai [her mate of the last few seasons] this year and no evidence of a nest cup; so it is unlikely that they will nest this year,” said Jon Plissner, Wildlife Biologist at Midway Atoll. “We will continue to monitor the area through the month of December, as a few new nest starts of Laysan Albatross can occur in December.”

“It is normal for albatrosses take a year off from parenting between chicks.  Wisdom and her mate have met on Midway Atoll to lay and hatch an egg almost every year since 2006.  It is estimated that Wisdom has laid between 30–36 eggs in her lifetime.  In 2018, her chick that fledged in 2001 was observed just a few feet away from her current nest, marking the first time a returning chick of hers has been documented.  The chick returned to the same area each year since then but this December was found 200 yards [180 m] away on a nest of its own.”

Access previous postings about Wisdom in ACAP Latest News here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 23 December 2021

 Antipodean Albatross off North Cape, New Zealand, photograph by Kirk Zufelt

Last week New Zealand’s Ambassador to Spain, Nigel Fyfe, on behalf of the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Spanish Vice President Teresa Ribera yesterday in Madrid, Spain to reduce seabird bycatch.  The MoU will promote the adoption of bycatch mitigation measures, in particular those set out in the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels.  The two nations will also share information and collaborate on research on seabird conservation.

“Highly migratory species may spend much of their time foraging in the high seas.  We can’t limit ourselves to protecting these taonga [treasure] species only when they are breeding on our islands or coast and foraging in our waters,” [New Zealand] Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan said.

[New Zealand] Minister for Oceans and Fisheries David Parker said fishing in international waters posed a challenge to seabird species.  “Spain is a major fishing nation.  Together, New Zealand and Spain can play an important role in promoting best practice for seabird bycatch mitigation across the world.   This advocacy will help to protect our migratory seabirds in Pacific fisheries and beyond.”

The key actions in the MoU are to:

• Promote the adoption of bycatch mitigation measures, in particular those advised in the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels (ACAP)
• Share information and collaborate on research on seabird conservation
• Cooperate in the implementation of the Antipodean Albatross Concerted Action

According to Live Ocean the MoU is designed to promote the adoption of best practice fishing methods, including using what is known as ‘three of out three’ – weighted lines, bird-scaring lines and night setting. It also includes a commitment by the two nations to advocate internationally to promote the uptake of these fishing methods (click here).

Three years ago, a similar partnership was established between New Zealand's Department of Conservation and the Ministry for Primary Industries and Chile's  Undersecretaria of Fisheries and Aquaculture and its Ministry of Environment (click here).

Read more here.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 22 December 2022

 An ACAP-listed and Critically Endangered Balearic Shearwater Puffinus mauretanicus glides over a calm sea; photograph by ‘Pep’ Arcos

Joan Ferrer Obiol (Departament de Genètica, Microbiologia i Estadística, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) and colleagues have published open access in the Journal of Biogeography on the  biogeography and the evolution of Ardenna, Calonectris and Puffinus shearwaters, a taxonomic group that includes two ACAP-listed species.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Aim

Palaeoceanographic changes can act as drivers of diversification and speciation, even in highly mobile marine organisms. Shearwaters are a group of globally distributed and highly mobile pelagic seabirds. Despite a recent well-resolved phylogeny, shearwaters have controversial species limits, and show periods of both slow and rapid diversification. Here, we explore the role of palaeoceanographic changes on shearwaters' diversification and speciation. We investigate shearwater biogeography and the evolution of a key phenotypic trait, body size, and we assess the validity of their current taxonomy.

Location
Worldwide.

Taxa
Shearwaters (Order Procellariiformes, Family Procellariidae, Genera Ardenna, Calonectris and Puffinus).

Methods
e generated genomic (ddRAD) data to infer a time-calibrated species tree for the shearwaters. We estimated ancestral ranges and evaluated the roles of founder events, vicariance and surface ocean currents in driving diversification. We performed phylogenetic generalised least squares to identify potential predictors of variability in body size along the phylogeny. To assess the validity of the current taxonomy, we analysed genomic patterns of recent shared ancestry and differentiation among shearwater taxa.

Results
We identified a period of high dispersal and rapid speciation during the Late Pliocene–early Pleistocene. Species dispersal appears to be favoured by surface ocean currents, and founder events are supported as the main mode of speciation in these highly mobile pelagic seabirds. Body mass shows significant associations with life strategies and local conditions. The current taxonomy shows some incongruences with the patterns of genomic divergence.

Main Conclusions
A reduction of neritic areas during the Pliocene seems to have driven global extinctions of shearwater species, followed by a subsequent burst of speciation and dispersal probably promoted by Plio-Pleistocene climatic shifts. Our findings extend our understanding on the drivers of speciation and dispersal of highly mobile pelagic seabirds and shed new light on the important role of palaeoceanographic events.”

An ACAP-listed and Vulnerable Pink-footed Shearwater Ardenna creatopus at sea; photograph by Peter Hodum

Reference:

Ferrer Obiol, J., James, H.F., Chesser, R.T., Bretagnolle, V., González-Solís, J., Rozas, J., Welch, A.J. & Riutort, M. 2021.  Palaeoceanographic changes in the late Pliocene promoted rapid diversification in pelagic seabirds.  Journal of Biogeography doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14291.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 21 December 2021