Behavioural and physiological monitoring of sea ducks over the annual cycle

海鸭年度周期的行为和生理监测

• 批准号: RGPIN-2019-03947
• 负责人: Guillemette, Magella
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: Université du Québec à Rimouski
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=713435
• 关键词: Behavioural; physiological; monitoring; sea; ducks

Birds are highly mobile animals. In particular, migratory birds cross frontiers to breed, moult and winter at various locations over large geographic scales (300-8000 km). This very characteristic makes the study and conservation of migrating birds challenging. In the proposed research program, my aim is to describe the annual cycle of sea ducks and understand how the various biological phases are integrated chronologically and energetically in relation to breeding success. In the past 15 years, my work have been devoted to field work on breeding colonies, deployment of data loggers, development of software for data extraction, and experiments with captive and wild Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima, our model species). We found that daily energy expenditure (DEE) varied during the annual cycle with various ups and downs associated with productive costs occurring during post-hatching, moult and migration, despite strategies enabling energy minimisation like behavioural compensation and timing of important activities (moult) with favourable conditions (high water temperature). Experiments with captive ducks supported the notion that water temperature was used as an exogenous cue for the timing of moult. Moreover, we found that daily body temperature of wild ducks were highly correlated with photoperiod and water temperature for a full year suggesting that daylight was an important driver of metabolic activity. Therefore, I wish to pursue the general goal from former proposals together with new questions stemming from my lab. I will perform experiments with captive birds of different sub-species to determine the nature and the role of biological clocks in the timing of annual phases (biological seasons) and investigate the role of body mass and foraging effort in this respect, together with new deployments of data loggers on wild individuals from another population (sub-species) for comparative purposes. In the past six years, we also explored the migration strategy of eider ducks to discover that hyperthermia was occurring repeatedly during flights followed by regular stops to cool down, suggesting unexpected physiological and time costs to bird migration. Future work with imprinted and captive individuals is proposed in order to document the deleterious effects of flight-induced hyperthermia by measuring oxidative stress indicators under an experimental scheme. I believe the research proposed here to be highly innovative as it is based on a custom technology that allow the recording of highly relevant information of individuals in the wild together with experiments performed on captive birds aiming at identifying the underlying mechanisms shaping the annual cycle of birds.

鸟是高流动的动物。尤其是，迁徙鸟类跨越了大型地理尺度（300-8000公里）的各个位置繁殖，换羽和冬季。这种特征使研究和保护迁移鸟类具有挑战性。在拟议的研究计划中，我的目的是描述海鸭的年度周期，并了解各种生物阶段如何按时间顺序和精力整合到繁殖成功方面。在过去的15年中，我的工作一直致力于实地研究繁殖菌落，数据记录仪的部署，数据提取软件的开发以及使用圈养和野生共同的Eiders（Somateria Mollissima，我们的模型物种）进行实验。我们发现，尽管策略可以最大程度地减少能量，例如行为补偿和重要的活动时间（MOULT），但每天的每日能源消耗（DEE）在年度周期中发生了不同的，与既有能量最小化的策略可以最小化，但有利的条件（高水温），尽管能量最小化（高水温），但与生产成本相关的各种起伏不已。用圈养鸭的实验支持了这样一种观念，即水温被用作换羽时机的外源提示。此外，我们发现野鸭的每日体温与光周期和水温高度相关，这表明日光是代谢活动的重要驱动力。因此，我希望从以前的提案中追求一般目标，以及我实验室的新问题。我将使用不同亚种的圈养鸟类进行实验，以确定生物钟在年度阶段（生物季节）的时间（生物季节）中的性质和作用，并研究体重和在这方面的觅食工作的作用，以及在这方面的新部署，以及来自另一个人群（子种群）的野生个体对野生个体的新部署。在过去的六年中，我们还探索了杜克斯的迁移策略，发现在飞行过程中，热疗发生了反复发生，然后定期停止冷却，这表明鸟类迁移的意外生理和时间成本。提出了与印迹和圈养个体的未来工作，以通过测量实验方案下的氧化应激指标来记录飞行引起的高温的有害影响。我认为，这里提出的研究具有高度创新性，因为它是基于一种定制技术，该技术允许记录野外高度相关的信息以及对旨在识别构成鸟类年度鸟周期的基本机制进行的圈养鸟类进行的实验。