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

海鸟是所有鸟类群体中最引人注目和最有魅力的，反映了它们在殖民地的丰度往往非常高，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划分的研究人员。最近，海鸟跟踪数据呈指数增长，为研究海鸟的分布、生态和进化提供了前所未有的机会。关键的栖息地变量的知识允许物种分布模型（SDM）的建立，但有越来越多的证据表明，从相邻的殖民地的鸟类可以显示空间隔离，和SDM有时表现不佳时，适用于其他生活史阶段，人口或环境。该项目的目的是利用信天翁和海燕在南大洋不同岛屿群繁殖的广泛跟踪数据集：比较整个年度周期的生境利用和觅食行为;测试不同类型的空间数据模型的预测性能;确定可及性和偏好在解释各种群生境利用方面的作用;研究不同地点的生态相似物种对栖息地偏好的趋同性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.