Drivers and demographic consequences of seabird foraging strategies in a changing environment

由于过度捕捞、气候变化、污染和可再生能源发电等多种人为影响，沿海海洋生态系统正在发生快速变化(1)。这些变化对包括海鸟等顶级捕食者在内的海洋生物产生了重要影响，并引起了对受保护种群的日益关注(2)。了解海鸟如何根据环境和食物资源的时空变化调整它们的行为，从而形成能量学和人口统计学，对于预测它们应对未来环境变化的能力和制定有效的保护措施至关重要(3)。个体的觅食决定受到一系列环境因素的影响，包括适宜栖息地的可用性、海洋学和天气条件（4,5,6）。觅食策略也受到内在因素的影响，如性别、身体状况、繁殖阶段或与其他个体的互动，包括社会信息的使用和繁殖伙伴之间对后代供应努力的协商（7,8）。然而，尽管海鸟觅食行为的可塑性有很好的记录，但缺乏对关键驱动因素如何形成对环境变化的反应的强有力理解，这阻碍了我们量化和预测人类活动对受保护物种的影响的能力，推迟了我们提供实现净零目标所需的海上可再生能源能力的能力。该项目将使用世界上最广泛的海鸟在海上活动、位置和人口统计数据集之一，跨越35年，以及额外的有针对性的数据收集，以确定近海、底栖觅食物种欧洲沙鸥觅食策略的关键驱动因素和人口统计结果。该项目旨在：(1)确定不同环境条件和种群密度下觅食行为的驱动因素；(2)确定觅食策略对生产力和生存的影响；(3)预测未来人类活动不同情景下生产力和生存变化对人口轨迹的影响。

Coastal marine ecosystems are undergoing rapid change due to multiple anthropogenic impacts including overfishing, climate change, pollution and renewable energy generation (1). These changes have important impacts on marine organisms, including top predators such as seabirds, and have led to increased concern for protected populations (2). Understanding how seabirds adjust their behaviour with respect to spatio-temporal variation in their environment and food resources to shape energetics and demography is crucial for predicting their ability to cope with future environmental change, and for devising effective conservation measures (3). Individual foraging decisions are shaped by a range of environmental drivers including availability of suitable habitat, oceanographic and weather conditions (4, 5, 6). Foraging strategies are also influenced by intrinsic factors such as sex, body condition, breeding stage, or interactions with other individuals including use of social information and negotiation of offspring provisioning effort between breeding partners (7, 8). However, while plasticity in seabird foraging behaviour is well documented, robust understanding of how key drivers shape responses to environmental change is lacking which hinders our ability to quantify and predict impacts of anthropogenic activities on protected species, delaying our ability to deliver offshore renewable energy capacity needed to meet net zero targets.This project will use one of the most extensive datasets on seabird at-sea activity, location and demography in the world, spanning 35 years, as well as additional targeted data collection to determine key drivers and demographic consequences of foraging strategies in an inshore, benthic-foraging species, the European shag. The project aims to: (1) identify drivers of foraging behaviour across a range of environmental conditions and population densities; (2) determine the consequences of foraging strategies for productivity and survival; and (3) forecast impacts of change in productivity and survival on population trajectories under different scenarios of future human activity.