Applying High-resolution GPS Tracking to Characterize Sensory Foraging Strategies of the Black-browed Albatross, a Top Predator of the Southern Ocean Ecosystem

由于地球70%的表面被海洋覆盖，迁徙海鸟生态学长期以来感兴趣的一个问题是，它们如何在如此遥远的距离找到猎物。该项目旨在调查海燕、信天翁和剪毛鸟等原贝类海鸟在觅食行为中使用的感官策略。这些鸟类经常在数千公里的开阔海洋上飞行，显然是使用它们显著的嗅觉能力(已知比其他鸟类敏感100万倍)来识别多产的海洋区域或定位猎物。需要高分辨率的跟踪，例如由微型GPS数据记录器(+/-5m；10秒采样)提供的跟踪，以深入了解鸟类用来定位猎物的感觉机制的一些问题。将这些跟踪和定位设备与能够指示猎物摄取的胃温记录器结合起来，将提供丰富的新行为信息。对于这些不同的海洋捕食者，基于猎物特定气味的物种特定觅食(例如磷虾、渔业和鱿鱼)以及利用嗅觉和视觉线索的混合策略似乎是不同的。信天翁是全球日益濒危的物种，关于它们觅食策略的更多信息可能会导致更好的保护措施，如避免长线渔民的副渔获物。每个物种白天和夜间觅食活动的详细信息，以及对这些顶级捕食者在南大洋中上层生态系统的保护的洞察，是这些新的精细规模解决方法正在产生的几个研究方向。

With 70% of the Earth's surface being covered by oceans, a longstanding question of interest to the ecology of migratory seabirds is how they locate their prey across such vast distances. The project seeks to investigate the sensory strategies used in the foraging behavior of procellariiform seabirds, such as petrels, albatrosses and shearwaters. These birds routinely travel over thousands of kilometers of open ocean, apparently using their pronounced olfactory abilities (known to be up to a million times more sensitive than other birds) to identify productive marine areas or locate prey. High resolution tracking, such as provided by miniaturized GPS data loggers (+/- 5m; 10 second sampling), are needed to gain insight into some of the questions as to the sensory mechanisms birds use to locate their prey. Combining these tracking and positioning devices along with stomach temperature recorders capable of indicating prey ingestion, will provide a wealth of new behavioral information. Species specific foraging based on prey specific odors (e.g. krill vs fisheries vs. squid), and mixed strategies using olfaction and visual cues appear to be different for these different marine predators. Albatrosses are increasingly an endangered species globally, and additional information as to their foraging strategies might lead to better conservation measures such as the avoidance of by-catch by long-line fisheries.Intimate details of each species foraging activity patterns during the day and night and insight into the conservation of these top predators in pelagic Southern Ocean ecosystems are a few of the research directions these novel fine scale resolution approaches are yielding.