Quantifying the role of oceanic storminess in determining the survival and recruitment of long-distance, oversea, migratory birds

鸟类的迁徙在很大程度上是基于陆地鸟类的研究，但关于长寿海鸟和在开阔海洋上迁徙的鸟类的迁徙模式的文献存在明显的差距。海鸟是海洋健康的极好生物学指标，因为它们每年在海上觅食，并长途跋涉，从繁殖地迁徙到越冬地，然后再回来。这种旅程往往需要一些时间(几天到几个月)，许多旅程跨越数千英里，在此期间，海外气象条件和海况可能对迁徙模式发挥重要的、随机的作用，阻碍或促进迁徙的生存和种群招募，这可能会根据鸟类的经验，即年龄而有所不同。然而，人们对环境变化的后果知之甚少，关于个体在迁徙过程中的行为、他们选择航行到哪里以及海洋风暴和天气变化对生存和人口招募的影响仍然存在问题。这个项目将研究三种候鸟的种群数量和生存情况：北爱尔兰科普兰鸟类观测站灯塔岛上的Manx Shearwater(Puffinus Puffinus)，它绕大西洋飞行10,000公里，在阿根廷海岸越冬，在英国和爱尔兰繁殖；北爱尔兰福尔马斯(Fulmarus Glcialis)，位于苏格兰奥克尼的Eynhallow，沿大西洋中山脊越冬，距离苏格兰3,000公里；爱尔兰西海岸藤雁(Branta Leucopsis)，在格陵兰岛北极繁殖，在爱尔兰越冬，距离2,000公里。为此，我将使用捕获-标记-重新捕获建模技术的长期年度时间序列数据集，其中包含这三个迁徙物种的10万只鸟鸣记录，以估计它们的年度存活概率、种群估计数和增长率，并利用它们在迁徙的不同阶段可能经历的遥感卫星数据和海洋浮标得出的气象条件进行分析。这一项目提供了机会，利用特殊的长期数据集，提出关于开放海洋上鸟类的迁徙模式如何与环境变异性相互作用以及对个人和种群造成的后果等基本问题。此外，该项目将制定监测和监测协议，以估计丰度和丰度随时间的变化。

Avian migration is largely understood from studies based on terrestrial birds but there is a noticeable gap in literature on migration patterns in long-lived seabirds and birds that migrate over open oceans. Seabirds are excellent biological indicators of ocean health because they forage at sea and make massive distances every year to migrate from their breeding grounds to their overwintering grounds and back again. Such journeys often take some time (days to months) and many journeys cover thousands of miles, during which oversea meteorological conditions and sea state may have an important, stochastic, role to play on migration patterns by either impeding or facilitating a migrant's survival and population recruitment, which may vary according to bird experience i.e. age. However, the consequences of environmental variability is poorly understood and questions still remain on the behaviour of the individual during migration, where they choose to navigate to and the influence of oceanic storms and weather changes on the survival and population recruitment. This project will study the population and survival of three migratory birds: Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus) on Lighthouse Island at the Copeland Bird Observatory, Northern Ireland, which circumnavigate the Atlantic Ocean flying 10,000 km to overwinter in the Argentinean coast and breed in Britain and Ireland; Northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) on Eynhallow, Orkney, Scotland, overwinter along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge 3,000 km from their breeding grounds in Scotland; and barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) in the west coasts of Ireland, which breed in Arctic Greenland and overwinter in Ireland over a distance of 2,000 km. For this I will use long-term annual time-series datasets of capture-mark-recapture modelling techniques which contain 100,000s of bird ringing records of these three migrant species to estimate the annual survival probabilities, population estimates and growth rates, and analyse this with meteorological conditions derived from remotely-sensed satellite data and ocean buoys, which they would have experienced at various stages of their migration. This project offers the opportunity to ask fundamental questions about how migration patterns in birds over open oceans interact with environmental variability and the consequences for individuals and populations using exceptional long-term datasets. Furthermore, this project will put in place a monitoring and surveillance protocol to estimate abundance and change in abundance over time.