At risk to House Mice.  A Grey-headed Albatross stands over its chick on Marion Island; photograph by John Dickens

A BirdLife South Africa Conservation Conversations webinar that was presented on the Gough and Marion Island mouse eradication projects on 23 November is now available on YouTube.

In the webinar Nini van der Merwe, Assistant Logistics & Procurement Manager, Gough Island Restoration Programme gives an update on the project and shares her experience of being part of the on-island team during the recently completed baiting operation to rid the island of its albatross-killing House Mice.  Anton Wolfaardt joins in at the end of Nini’s talk to share some of the progress with the Mouse-Free Marion Project, of which he is the Project Manager.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 December 2021

 
Black-browed Albatross at sea; artwork for ACAP by Peter Ward, Artists & Biologists Unite for Nature (ABUN)

 Francesco Ventura (Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences on divorce in Black-browed Albatrosses Thalassarche melanophris in relation to environmental fluctuations.  The study concludes “Hence, in light of the dramatic extent of the current climatic changes, the environmentally driven disruptions of the breeding processes of socially monogamous populations might represent an overlooked consequence of global change, with repercussions on demography and population dynamics”.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“In many socially monogamous species, divorce is a strategy used to correct for sub-optimal partnerships and is informed by measures of previous breeding performance. The environment affects the productivity and survival of populations, thus indirectly affecting divorce via changes in demographic rates. However, whether environmental fluctuations directly modulate the prevalence of divorce in a population remains poorly understood. Here, using a longitudinal dataset on the long-lived black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) as a model organism, we test the hypothesis that environmental variability directly affects divorce. We found that divorce rate varied across years (1% to 8%). Individuals were more likely to divorce after breeding failures. However, regardless of previous breeding performance, the probability of divorce was directly affected by the environment, increasing in years with warm sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA). Furthermore, our state-space models show that warm SSTA increased the probability of switching mates in females in successful relationships. For the first time, to our knowledge, we document the disruptive effects of challenging environmental conditions on the breeding processes of a monogamous population, potentially mediated by higher reproductive costs, changes in phenology and physiological stress. Environmentally driven divorce may therefore represent an overlooked consequence of global change.”

Read a popular account of the research here and listen to a radio interview about the publication with Graeme Elliot, Principal Science Adviser, Department of Conservation, New Zealand.

Reference:

Ventura, F., Pedro Granadeiro, J., Lukacs, P.M., Kuepfer, A. & Catry, P. 2021  Environmental variability directly affects the prevalence of divorce in monogamous albatrosses.  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2112.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 30 November 2021

“Southern Ocean Wanderer” by Brett Jarrett

Hosted by the South Georgia Association and live streamed on 18 November, a video talk entitled “Saving Ocean Wanderers” is now available via YouTube.  In their talk Stephanie Prince (High Seas Bycatch Programme Manager, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and Yasuko Suzuki (BirdLife International in Japan) discuss their work educating Japanese tuna fishing fleets on the high seas to avoid incidental mortality of albatrosses in the South Atlantic Ocean.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 29 November 2021

A Wandering Albatross pair interacts near the weather station on Marion Island, photograph by Stefan Schoombie

BirdLife South Africa's weekly webinar series ‘Conservation Conversations’ last week hosted Tegan Carpenter-Kling and Stefan Schoombie who shared their experiences of living and working on South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean.  Their illustrated talks describe some of the research towards their PhDs they undertook on the island’s seabirds, including on the ACAP-listed albatrosses and giant petrels that are at risk to introduced House Mice.

Conservation Conversations: Tegan Carpenter-Kling and Stefan Schoombie - Seabirds on Marion Island

The Mouse-Free Marion Project aims to eradicate the island’s seabird-killing mice in 2024, thus allowing the albatrosses and giant petrels described in the talks to breed unhindered by a terrestrial predator once more.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 26 November 2021