An inordinate fondness for seabirds: how to explain patterns in abundance and diversity of albatrosses and petrels across the Southern Ocean

海鸟是所有鸟类中最引人注目和最有魅力的，反映了它们在种群中通常非常高的丰度，以及它们的系统发育和形态多样性。这些物种是如何共存的，特别是当它们在繁殖季节必须回到同一片海岸或岛屿时，这吸引了热衷于了解生态位分配的研究人员。近年来，海鸟追踪数据呈指数增长，为研究海鸟的分布、生态和进化提供了前所未有的机会。对关键栖息地变量的了解使物种分布模型（SDMs）得以建立，但越来越多的证据表明，来自相邻种群的鸟类可能表现出空间隔离，而SDMs有时在应用于其他生活史阶段、种群或环境时表现不佳。该项目的目的是利用在南大洋不同岛屿群上繁殖的信天翁和海燕的广泛跟踪数据集：比较整个年周期的栖息地使用和觅食行为；检验不同类型SDMs的预测性能；确定可达性和偏好在解释不同种群对生境的利用方面的作用；研究生态相似物种在不同地点的生境偏好趋同及其在群落结构中的作用。

Seabirds are amongst the most conspicuous and charismatic of all bird groups, reflecting their often very high abundance at colonies, and their phylogenetic and morphological diversity. How these species co-exist particularly when they must return to the same stretch of coast or island during the breeding season, has fascinated researchers keen to understand niche partitioning. The recent exponential increase in tracking data from seabirds offers unprecedented opportunities for research on the distribution, ecology and evolution of seabirds. Knowledge of key habitat variables allows species distribution models (SDMs) to be built, but there is increasing evidence that birds from adjacent colonies can show spatial segregation, and SDMs sometimes perform poorly when applied to other life-history stages, populations or environments. The aims of this project are to use extensive tracking datasets from albatrosses and petrels breeding at different island groups in the Southern Ocean to: compare habitat use and foraging behavior across the annual cycle; test the predictive performance of different types of SDMs; determine the role of accessibility and preference in explaining habitat use across populations; examine convergence in habitat preference by ecologically-similar species at different sites and its role in community structure.