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.

鸟类是高度活动的动物。特别是，候鸟跨越国界，在大地理范围（300-8000公里）的不同地点繁殖、换羽和越冬。这一特征使得候鸟的研究和保护充满挑战。在拟议的研究计划中，我的目标是描述海鸭的年度周期，并了解不同的生物阶段如何按时间顺序和积极地整合与繁殖成功相关。在过去的 15 年里，我的工作一直致力于繁殖群体的实地工作、数据记录仪的部署、数据提取软件的开发以及圈养和野生绒鸭（Somateria mollissima，我们的模型物种）的实验。我们发现，尽管采取了诸如行为补偿和在有利条件（高水温）下进行重要活动（换羽）的时间安排等能够实现能量最小化的策略，但每日能量消耗（DEE）在年度周期中有所不同，与孵化后、换羽和迁徙期间发生的生产成本相关的各种上下波动。对圈养鸭子的实验支持了这样的观点：水温被用作换羽时间的外源线索。此外，我们发现野鸭的每日体温与全年的光周期和水温高度相关，表明日光是代谢活动的重要驱动因素。因此，我希望追求以前提案的总体目标以及我的实验室提出的新问题。我将对不同亚种的圈养鸟类进行实验，以确定生物钟的性质和在年相（生物季节）时间安排中的作用，并研究体重和觅食努力在这方面的作用，同时在来自另一个种群（亚种）的野生个体上部署新的数据记录器以进行比较。在过去的六年里，我们还探索了绒鸭的迁徙策略，发现在飞行过程中反复出现体温过高，然后定期停下来降温，这表明鸟类迁徙需要付出意想不到的生理和时间成本。建议未来对印记个体和圈养个体进行研究，以便通过在实验方案下测量氧化应激指标来记录飞行引起的高热的有害影响。我相信这里提出的研究具有高度创新性，因为它基于一种定制技术，可以记录野外个体的高度相关信息，并对圈养鸟类进行实验，旨在确定影响鸟类年度周期的潜在机制。