Modelling seabird breeding habitat selection

海鸟繁殖栖息地选择建模

• 批准号: NE/X013375/1
• 负责人: Emily Shepard
• 金额: $ 10.28万
• 依托单位: Swansea University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX013375%2F1
• 关键词: Modelling; seabird; breeding; habitat; selection

Seabirds breed on offshore islands and/ or coastal cliffs to reduce exposure to terrestrial predators and be close to feeding areas. Nonetheless, for cliff nesting species, it is clear that not all cliffs are equal: Birds crowd into some areas at densities of over 70 nests per metre squared, while other cliffs are left empty, even when they apparently contain ledges suitable for nesting. Exposure to wind is likely to be a key factor due to its impact on thermoregulation, flight capacity and the ability of strong winds to displace birds from the nest, with the importance of wind varying between species according to body mass and flight style, for instance. In support of this, a recent study has shown that large breeding colonies of common guillemots (hereafter guillemots) can be predicted from simple proxies for shelter on two small, neighbouring islands. Nonetheless, the links between airflows and fitness have yet to be tested, and whether shelter can predict breeding distributions at a regional scale, including in colonies that vary in their exposure to strong winds, remains unknown. These represent important knowledge gaps because (i) colonies can represent the nexus of reproductive activity for tens of thousands of individuals and (ii) wind regimes are changing.We will establish the impact of wind on population level processes in cliff-nesting seabirds, taking common guillemots (Uria aalge), hereafter guillemots, razorbills (Alca torda), black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) and northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) as our study systems. We focus on cliff-nesting species as these will be the most exposed to the wind. They also represent over 75% of the seabirds breeding in the UK (over 6 million of the approximately 8 million recorded by the JNCC Seabird 2000 report). The influence of wind seabirds is therefore of interest both from a conservation perspective and from the wider impact on marine communities. A key constraint in the ability to study the impact of wind at the nest site has been the difficulties of measuring wind over steep and inaccessible terrain, such as nesting cliffs. We will take an ambitious, interdisciplinary approach using computational fluid dynamics software (CFD) to characterise the airflows that birds select and avoid at their breeding cliffs in 9 areas of the UK. CFD is widely used in other disciplines (e.g. in the wind energy industry) and has proved pivotal for understanding the impact of currents on the behaviour and ecology of riverine fish. However, wider applications in animal ecology are lacking. We will use supercomputing facilities to model the wind in our study areas, which represents an increase in 3 orders of magnitude in the scale at which such models have been used in avian ecology. This will allow us to establish (i) whether birds select their breeding habitat in relation to the shelter it provides, whether shelter can predict (ii) differences in breeding success between sub-colonies, and (iii) the population trend over a decadal scale. Finally, we will test whether simple measures of cliff orientation can be used as a proxy for shelter, which would allow our approach to be applied to even larger areas without the associated computational cost. Our project capitalises on the rich data available for breeding seabirds across the UK, including at least a decade of count and breeding success data from 9 areas that vary in their exposure to strong winds, and that represent a substantial proportion of the total UK breeding populations of our study species. The outputs will include the first regional-scale habitat selection model for seabirds, as well as novel insight into the mechanisms by which wind impacts wider population-level processes.

海鸟在近海岛屿和/或海岸悬崖上繁殖，以减少暴露于陆地捕食者，并靠近喂食区。尽管如此，对于悬崖筑巢物种来说，很明显并非所有的悬崖都是平等的：鸟类以每平方米70多个巢的密度聚集在一些地区，而其他悬崖则是空的，即使它们显然含有适合筑巢的壁架。暴露在风中可能是一个关键因素，因为它会影响体温调节，飞行能力和强风将鸟类从巢穴中驱逐的能力，例如，根据体重和飞行方式，风的重要性在物种之间存在差异。为了支持这一点，最近的一项研究表明，可以从两个小的邻近岛屿上的庇护所的简单代理预测普通海鸠（以下简称海鸠）的大型繁殖群体。尽管如此，气流和健康之间的联系还有待测试，庇护所是否可以预测区域范围内的繁殖分布，包括在不同的殖民地暴露于强风，仍然是未知的。这些代表了重要的知识差距，因为（i）群体可以代表成千上万个体的生殖活动的联系，（ii）风况正在变化。我们将建立风对悬崖筑巢海鸟种群水平过程的影响，以常见的海鸠为例（Uria aalge），此后海鸠，剃刀嘴（Alca torda）、黑脚三趾鸥（里萨三趾鸥）和北方管风琴（Fulmarus glacialis）作为研究系统。我们专注于悬崖筑巢物种，因为这些将是最暴露于风。它们还占英国海鸟繁殖的75%以上（JNCC 2000年海鸟报告记录的约800万只中的600多万只）。因此，从养护的角度和对海洋社区的更广泛影响来看，风海鸟的影响都是令人感兴趣的。研究风对筑巢地点影响的能力的一个关键限制是在陡峭和难以到达的地形（如筑巢悬崖）上测量风的困难。我们将采取一个雄心勃勃的，跨学科的方法，使用计算流体动力学软件（CFD）来模拟气流，鸟类选择和避免在他们的繁殖悬崖在9个地区的英国。CFD被广泛应用于其他学科（例如风能行业），并已被证明是了解水流对河流鱼类行为和生态影响的关键。然而，在动物生态学中缺乏更广泛的应用。我们将使用超级计算设备来模拟我们研究区域的风，这代表了在鸟类生态学中使用这种模型的规模增加了3个数量级。这将使我们能够建立（i）鸟类是否选择其繁殖栖息地的庇护所，它提供的，是否庇护所可以预测（ii）在繁殖成功的差异之间的亚殖民地，和（iii）在十年尺度的人口趋势。最后，我们将测试悬崖方向的简单措施是否可以用作庇护所的代理，这将使我们的方法适用于更大的区域，而无需相关的计算成本。我们的项目利用了英国各地海鸟繁殖的丰富数据，包括来自9个地区的至少十年的计数和繁殖成功数据，这些地区在强风中的暴露程度各不相同，并且代表了我们研究物种的英国总繁殖种群的很大一部分。这些成果将包括第一个区域规模的海鸟栖息地选择模型，以及对风影响更广泛的人口过程的机制的新见解。