Applying High-resolution GPS Tracking to Characterize Sensory Foraging Strategies of the Black-browed Albatross, a Top Predator of the Southern Ocean Ecosystem

由于地球表面的70%被海洋覆盖，迁徙海鸟的生态学长期以来一直感兴趣的一个问题是，它们是如何在如此遥远的距离上找到猎物的。该项目旨在调查在海燕、信天翁和海鸥等前体海鸟觅食行为中使用的感官策略。这些鸟经常在开阔的海洋上飞行数千公里，显然是利用它们明显的嗅觉能力（已知比其他鸟类灵敏100万倍）来识别多产的海洋区域或定位猎物。高分辨率的跟踪，例如由小型GPS数据记录仪（+/- 5m； 10秒采样）提供，需要深入了解鸟类用来定位猎物的感觉机制的一些问题。将这些跟踪和定位装置与能够指示猎物摄入的胃温记录仪结合起来，将提供丰富的新行为信息。基于猎物特定气味的物种特定觅食（例如磷虾、渔业和鱿鱼），以及使用嗅觉和视觉线索的混合策略，对于这些不同的海洋捕食者来说似乎是不同的。信天翁在全球范围内日益成为濒危物种，关于它们觅食策略的更多信息可能会导致更好的保护措施，例如避免长线渔业的副渔获。每个物种在白天和黑夜的觅食活动模式的详细细节以及对这些顶级捕食者在中上层南大洋生态系统中的保护的深入了解是这些新的精细尺度分辨率方法产生的一些研究方向。

With 70% of the Earth's surface being covered by oceans, a longstanding question of interest to the ecology of migratory seabirds is how they locate their prey across such vast distances. The project seeks to investigate the sensory strategies used in the foraging behavior of procellariiform seabirds, such as petrels, albatrosses and shearwaters. These birds routinely travel over thousands of kilometers of open ocean, apparently using their pronounced olfactory abilities (known to be up to a million times more sensitive than other birds) to identify productive marine areas or locate prey. High resolution tracking, such as provided by miniaturized GPS data loggers (+/- 5m; 10 second sampling), are needed to gain insight into some of the questions as to the sensory mechanisms birds use to locate their prey. Combining these tracking and positioning devices along with stomach temperature recorders capable of indicating prey ingestion, will provide a wealth of new behavioral information. Species specific foraging based on prey specific odors (e.g. krill vs fisheries vs. squid), and mixed strategies using olfaction and visual cues appear to be different for these different marine predators. Albatrosses are increasingly an endangered species globally, and additional information as to their foraging strategies might lead to better conservation measures such as the avoidance of by-catch by long-line fisheries.Intimate details of each species foraging activity patterns during the day and night and insight into the conservation of these top predators in pelagic Southern Ocean ecosystems are a few of the research directions these novel fine scale resolution approaches are yielding.