Movement ecology in pelagic seabirds
- Autores: Zuzana Zajková
- Directores de la Tesis: Jacob González-Solís i Bou (dir. tes.), Federico Bartumeus Ferre (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2020
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Daniel Robert (presid.), Pascual López López (secret.), Kamran Safi (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Biodiversidad
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
Movement is a fundamental component of behaviour and thus both are inextricably linked, so variation in movement patterns usually reflects different behaviours. The way individuals allocate time budgets to different behaviours within circadian rhythms and over the annual cycle will ultimately provide knowledge about evolutionary processes and adaptive capacity, which is also important to proper conservation actions of endangered species. Seabird movements have been studied over the last 20 years with the wide deployment of geolocator-immersion loggers, but wet-dry data seem underused according to literature published. Along 4 chapters this thesis presents novel insights about movements and behaviour of 4 little-known seabird species from the Atlantic Ocean: Boyd’s shearwater (Puffinus boydi), Common tern (Sterna hirundo), Atlantic petrel (Pterodroma incerta) and Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris borealis). Using wet-dry data alone or combined with positional data we uncovered the timing of major life cycle events and revealed circadian and circa-annual activity patterns of such species. In highly mobile migratory seabirds, the existence of radically different behavioural contexts linked to phenology and the need to exploit different marine environments over the year lead to different behavioural budgets. In the last chapter, we present a new analytical protocol based on state-of-the-art algorithms to decipher behaviours from wet-dry data. We reveal the hierarchical and modular nature of seabird behaviour at an unprecedented level of detail and used cutting-edge data visualization to highlight key insights. Our framework paves the way to use behavioural annotation for addressing old and new questions of interest in ecology from new perspectives using geolocator-immersion sensors. Overall, through this thesis I highlight the irreplaceable utility of wet-dry data to get unique insights in ecology and behaviour over the annual cycle of seabirds, a difficult-to-observe group of birds that remain out of the human sight most of their life. Geolocator-immersion sensors continue to be the most extended loggers to track year-round movements of seabirds, since they ensure the welfare of tagged individuals. Therefore, the results compiled in this thesis should encourage researchers to incorporate the use wet-dry data within hypothesis-driven frameworks, which surely would contribute to increase our knowledge of seabird ecology at sea.
