As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Monday 25 July 2016

Underwater terrain may be key factor in little auk foraging


The birds target continental shelf and shelf break for foraging regardless of sea ice presence or absence

Date: July 20, 2016
Source: PLOS

Little auks forage in the same areas off East Greenland -- the continental shelf and its edge -- regardless of whether sea ice is present or absent, according to a study published July 20, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Françoise Amélineau, from the University of Montpellier, France, and colleagues.

Little auks, which live only in the Arctic, dive for copepods and other zooplankton in the "marginal ice zone" that lies between pack ice and open water. To test the impact of sea ice loss and underwater terrain on these seabirds, Amélineau and colleagues compared their foraging habits during two breeding seasons on the east coast of Greenland. Sea ice there varies naturally from year to year, and was present during one of the study periods but nearly absent during the other. The researchers temporarily fitted the auks with GPS and temperature-depth loggers to track the birds' movements during foraging.

The researchers found that whether sea ice was present or absent, little auks foraged in the same areas, targeting the continental shelf and its edge where prey may be concentrated. While the birds showed a preference for larger lipid-rich copepods, they also targeted smaller species that were plentiful at the shelf break when ice was absent. Importantly, the difference in diet had no impact on the body condition of adult little auks or on the growth of their chicks. These findings strengthen hypotheses from other recent work suggesting that little auks may have more flexibility than expected as the Arctic warms, and identified underwater terrain as a potential key factor for foraging.


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