Study reveals migration behaviors
of puffins for the first time
Date: November 30, 2017
Source: University of Oxford
An international collaboration
has for the first time revealed the key drivers of seabird migration. The new
study suggests that puffin colonies that travel great distances during the
winter often find it more difficult to breed than others, and that escaping
your habitat with far flung migration therefore carries a cost.
Published in Current Biology,
the work was led by researchers from the Department of Zoology of the University
of Oxford and conducted in collaboration with eight international partners,
including the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, the University of New
Brunswick in Canada and the South Iceland Nature Research Centre.
Over the course of eight years the
team studied the seasonal behaviours of a wide range of puffin colonies across
the species' range, covering 270 individual birds in total. By combining data
from multiple colonies the researchers were able to build an accurate picture
of the migration behaviours of Atlantic puffin colonies across the world.
While previous research has
focused on individual colonies and seabird species, the study marks the first
time that seabird migration behaviour has been studied on this scale in such
comprehensive detail.
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