Showing posts with label wandering albatross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wandering albatross. Show all posts
Monday, 1 January 2018
Thursday, 21 December 2017
Life of an albatross: Tackling individuality in studies of populations
A study follows 9,685 wandering
albatrosses throughout their long lives, seeking the intrinsic differences that
make some individuals outstanding performers
Date: December 7, 2017
Source: Ecological Society of America
Summary:
Ecologists commonly round off the
individuality of individuals, treating animals of the same species, sex, and
age like identical units. But individual differences can have demographic
effects on interpretation of data at the scale of whole populations, if due to
an underlying variability in individual quality, not chance. Researchers
examined in the peculiarities that make some wandering albatrosses more
successful than others.
When ecologists study populations
of animals, they commonly round off the individuality of individuals, treating
animals of the same species, sex, and age like identical units. This has
practical utility for studies focused on how populations change in size and
composition and how they respond to their environment.
Rémi Fay, a student at Université
de La Rochelle, in Villiers-en-Bois, France, is interested in the peculiarities
that make some animals more successful than others. Unrecognized differences in
performance between individuals can sometimes have demographic effects that
skew the interpretation of data at the scale of whole populations, if the
differences are not due to chance but to an underlying variability in
"individual quality." If, for example, low-quality individuals die
young, the population as a whole would appear to gain in performance with age.
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