Westerly winds in the Southern Ocean have increased in intensity and moved poleward. Using long-term demographic and foraging records, we show that foraging range in wandering albatrosses has shifted poleward in conjunction with these changes in wind pattern, while their rates of travel and flight speeds have increased. Consequently, the duration of foraging trips has decreased, breeding success has improved, and birds have increased in mass by more than 1 kilogram. These positive consequences of climate change may be temporary if patterns of wind in the southern westerlies follow predicted climate change scenarios. This study stresses the importance of foraging performance as the key link between environmental changes and population processes.

MotivationThe BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community‐led open‐source database of biodiversity time series. Our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the Anthropocene.Main types of variables includedThe database contains 8,777,413 species abundance records, from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years, which need not necessarily be consecutive. In addition, the database contains metadata relating to sampling methodology and contextual information about each record.Spatial location and grainBioTIME is a global database of 547,161 unique sampling locations spanning the marine, freshwater and terrestrial realms. Grain size varies across datasets from 0.0000000158 km2 (158 cm2) to 100 km2 (1,000,000,000,000 cm2).Time period and grainBioTIME records span from 1874 to 2016. The minimal temporal grain across all datasets in BioTIME is a year.Major taxa and level of measurementBioTIME includes data from 44,440 species across the plant and animal kingdoms, ranging from plants, plankton and terrestrial invertebrates to small and large vertebrates.Software format.csv and .SQL.

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Human fishing activities are negatively altering marine ecosystems in many ways [1, 2], but scavenging animals such as seabirds are taking advantage of such activities by exploiting fishery discards [3-5]. Despite the well-known impact of fisheries on seabird population dynamics [6-10], little is known about how discard availability affects seabird movement patterns. Using scenarios with and without trawling activity, we present evidence that fisheries modify the natural way in which two Mediterranean seabirds explore the seascape to look for resources during the breeding season. Based on satellite tracking data and a mathematical framework to quantify anomalous diffusion phenomena, we show how the interplay between traveling distances and pause periods contributes to the spatial spreading of the seabirds at regional scales (i.e., 10-250 km). When trawlers operate, seabirds show exponentially distributed traveling distances and a strong site fidelity to certain foraging areas, the whole foraging process being subdiffusive. In the absence of trawling activity, the site fidelity increases, but the whole movement pattern appears dominated by rare but very large traveling distances, making foraging a superdiffusive process. Our results demonstrate human involvement on landscape-level behavioral ecology and provide a new ecosystemic approach in the study of fishery-seabird interactions.

ABSTRACT1. Migratory marine species (MMS) include many of the world's most charismatic organisms such as marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, sharks, and tuna. Many are now among the most threatened due to the diverse range of pressures they encounter during their extensive movements. This paper shows that 21% of MMS are classified as threatened (i.e. categorized as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable). Sea turtles are the most threatened group (85%), followed by seabirds (27%), cartilaginous fish (26%), marine mammals (15%) and bony fish (11%). Taken together 48% of MMS are threatened, Near Threatened or Data Deficient.2. As well as being threatened they share in common being wide-ranging animals, travelling through the waters of multiple nations as well as in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) during different times of the year. This makes their conservation a challenge, requiring coordinated action by many nations, international organizations, Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and other stakeholders if their populations are to recover to healthy levels and be safeguarded into the future.3. Even though they are wide-ranging, long-term studies reveal considerable site fidelity and well-defined habitats for many species and areas. These sites are prime candidates for enhanced management such as via Marine Protect Area (MPA) designations. However, existing management frameworks do not yet contribute sufficiently to MMS conservation, MPA networks need to be expanded to capture key areas, in many cases through the application of new dynamic management techniques such as time area closures.4. Data on the distribution, abundance, behaviours and threats faced by many MMS are now available. These data should be used to inform the design of effective management regimes, such as MPAs, both within and beyond national jurisdictions. MEAs should ensure a full complement of MMS are included within species listings, and encourage further action to safeguard their populations.

Shearwaters and petrels (hereafter petrels) are highly adapted seabirds that occur across all the world's oceans. Petrels are a threatened seabird group comprising 124 species. They have bet-hedging life histories typified by extended chick rearing periods, low fecundity, high adult survival, strong philopatry, monogamy and long-term mate fidelity and are thus vulnerable to change. Anthropogenic alterations on land and at sea have led to a poor conservation status of many petrels with 52 (42%) threatened

Marine protected areas (MPAs) require ecologically meaningful designs capable of taking into account the particularities of the species under consideration, the dynamic nature of the marine environment, and the multiplicity of anthropogenic impacts. MPAs have been most often designated to protect benthic habitats and their biota. Increasingly, there is a need to account for highly mobile pelagic taxa, such as marine birds, mammals and turtles, and their oceanic habitats. For breeding seabirds foraging from a central place, particular attention should be paid to distant foraging grounds and movement corridors, which can often extend to hundreds of kilometers from breeding colonies. We assessed the habitat use by the most threatened Mediterranean seabird, the Balearic Shearwater, Puffinus mauretanicus, using vessel-based surveys during the chick-rearing period (May-June). We used a hierarchical modeling approach to identify those environmental variables that most accurately reflected the oceanographic habitat of this species by (1) delineating its foraging range using presence/ absence data and (2) identifying important foraging grounds where it concentrates in dense aggregations. The foraging range comprised the frontal systems along the eastern Iberian continental shelf waters (depth <200 m) and areas close to the breeding colonies in the Balearic Islands. Shearwaters aggregated in productive shelf areas with elevated chlorophyll a concentrations. Following the model of a core-buffer MPA, we envisioned those areas of dense aggregation (i.e., the area of influence of the Ebro River discharge and Cape La Nao regions) as the core regions deserving elevated protection and more stringent management. More diffuse protective measures would be applied within the larger buffer region, delineated by the foraging range of the species. Marine zoning measures can greatly benefit the conservation of the Balearic Shearwater and other far-ranging seabirds by extending protective measures beyond their breeding colonies during both the breeding and non-breeding seasons.

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