Parenting in a warming world: thermoregulatory responses to heat stress in an endangered seabird.

The frequency of extreme weather events, including heat waves, is increasing with climate change. The thermoregulatory demands resulting from hotter weather can have catastrophic impacts on animals, leading to mass mortalities. Although less dramatic, animals also experience physiological costs below, but approaching, critical temperature thresholds.

A non-invasive approach to estimate the energetic requirements of an increasing seabird population in a perturbed marine ecosystem.

There is a growing desire to integrate the food requirements of predators living in marine ecosystems impacted by humans into sustainable fisheries management. We used non-invasive video-recording, photography and focal observations to build time-energy budget models and to directly estimate the fish mass delivered to chicks by adult greater crested terns Thalasseus bergii breeding in the Benguela ecosystem. Mean modelled adult daily food intake increased from 140.

Foraging plasticity in seabirds: A non-invasive study of the diet of greater crested terns breeding in the Benguela region.

Marine predators, such as seabirds, are useful indicators of marine ecosystem functioning. In particular, seabird diet may reflect variability in food-web composition due to natural or human-induced environmental change. Diet monitoring programmes, which sample diet non-invasively, are valuable aids to conservation and management decision-making.

Group foraging in Socotra cormorants: A biologging approach to the study of a complex behavior.

Group foraging contradicts classic ecological theory because intraspecific competition normally increases with aggregation. Hence, there should be evolutionary benefits to group foraging. The study of group foraging in the field remains challenging however, because of the large number of individuals involved and the remoteness of the interactions to the observer.

Defining ecologically relevant scales for spatial protection with long-term data on an endangered seabird and local prey availability.

Human activities are important drivers of marine ecosystem functioning. However, separating the synergistic effects of fishing and environmental variability on the prey base of nontarget predators is difficult, often because prey availability estimates on appropriate scales are lacking. Understanding how prey abundance at different spatial scales links to population change can help integrate the needs of nontarget predators into fisheries management by defining ecologically relevant areas for spatial protection.

Buoyancy under control: underwater locomotor performance in a deep diving seabird suggests respiratory strategies for reducing foraging effort.

Background: Because they have air stored in many body compartments, diving seabirds are expected to exhibit efficient behavioural strategies for reducing costs related to buoyancy control. We study the underwater locomotor activity of a deep-diving species from the Cormorant family (Kerguelen shag) and report locomotor adjustments to the change of buoyancy with depth.

Methodology/principal Findings: Using accelerometers, we show that during both the descent and ascent phases of dives, shags modelled their acceleration and stroking activity on the natural variation of buoyancy with depth.