A juvenile Tristan albatross (Diomedea dabbenena) on land at the Crozet Islands

Abstract

Albatrosses and other seabirds are generally highly philopatric, returning to natal colonies when they achieve breeding age. This is not universal, however, and cases of extraordinary vagrancy are rare. The Tristan Albatross (Diomedea dabbenena) breeds on Gough Island in the South Atlantic Ocean, with a small population on Inaccessible Island, Tristan da Cunha, ca 380 km away. In 2015, we observed an adult male albatross in Gonydale, Gough Island, which had been ringed on Ile de la Possession, Crozet Islands in 2009 when it was assumed to be an immature Wandering Albatross (D. exulans). We sequenced 1109 bp of the cytochrome b mitochondrial gene from this bird, and confirmed it to be a Tristan Albatross, meaning its presence on Crozet 6 years previous, and nearly 5000 km away, was a case of prospecting behaviour in a heterospecific colony. Given the challenges in identifying immature Diomedea albatrosses, such dispersal events may be more common than thought previously.

Prospecting for informed dispersal: reappraisal of a widespread but overlooked ecological process

“…In particular, the use of GPS and satellite transmitters has been particularly crucial recently, as prospecting movements has been explicitly revealed over distances up to hundreds of kilometres (Table 1). So far, the most distant implicit prospecting movement has been identified in a Tristan albatross Diomedea dabbenena ringed as an immature in Crozet archipelago, and reobserved a few years later as an adult breeding in Gough Island, 5000 km away (Bond et al, 2021). The most distant prospecting movement actually recorded with tracking devices is in a black-legged kittiwake breeding in Hornøya (Norway), prospecting colonies up to 550km away in Russia (Table 1), 10 times further than the usual foraging range during the breeding season in this colony (Ponchon et al, 2015a(Ponchon et al, , 2017b.…”