Forage fish of the Pacific Rim as revealed by diet of a piscivorous seabird: synchrony and relationships with sea surface temperature

Thayer, Julie A.; Bertram, Douglas F.; Hatch, Scott A.; Hipfner, Mark; Slater, Leslie; Sydeman, William J.; Watanuki, Yutaka

doi:10.1139/f08-076

Cited by 41 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In both of these years the birds bred unsuccessfully despite cold ocean temperatures in April. Our examination of satellitederived SST near the colony shows similar negative correlations between measures of breeding success and Pine Island SST in April, but even stronger correlations later in the summer, in agreement with data presented by Thayer et al (2008). Our data also show that the linkages were much stronger and more persistent with SST at Egg Island.…”

Section: Sandlancesupporting

confidence: 91%

Environmental control of the breeding success of rhinoceros auklets at Triangle Island, British Columbia

Borstad¹,

Crawford²,

Hipfner³

et al. 2011

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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There are few studies of the mechanistic links between physical environmental processes and biotic responses in marine ecosystems that have strong predictive power. At Triangle Island, the largest seabird colony along Canada's Pacific coast, annual breeding success of rhinoceros auklets Cerorhinca monocerata varies dramatically. Previous studies have correlated this variability with ocean temperature, but this relationship occasionally fails, suggesting that it is not causal. We used historical satellite data time series of sea surface temperature, chlorophyll, and winds to study the oceanography of this remote colony. We found that rhinoceros auklets bred more successfully when the spring transition in regional winds and the resulting spring phytoplankton bloom occurred early in April. These factors appear to control the annual recruitment of Pacific sandlance Ammodytes hexapterus, as measured by the percent by biomass of young-of-the-year sandlance in the nestling diet. These linkages imply bottom-up control in this system. Suggesting broader implications of our work, we also found that marine survival of economically and culturally important sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka from nearby Smith Inlet was strongly correlated with the fledgling mass of the rhinoceros auklets, sandlance in the chicks' diets, and regional chlorophyll in April. The timing of the spring wind transition and phytoplankton bloom appear to be important for other predators in this system. We think that these relationships with wind and chlorophyll derived from satellite data are potentially valuable explanatory tools that will be widely applicable to studies of early marine survival of many marine species.

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Section: Sandlancesupporting

confidence: 91%

Environmental control of the breeding success of rhinoceros auklets at Triangle Island, British Columbia

Borstad¹,

Crawford²,

Hipfner³

et al. 2011

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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“…St Lazaria Island birds breed in a shallow continental shelf environment while Middleton Island birds have access to a more pelagic habitat. Typically, years that are food-rich for the Alaskan colonies are less so for the Japan colony (Thayer et al, 2008). Thus, we expected that auklets breeding at these three colonies in a given year would experience contrasting foraging conditions.…”

Section: Free-living Chicksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Teuri Island birds depend heavily upon lipid-rich Japanese anchovy (Engraulis japonicus), whose availability is affected on an inter-annual basis by a summer shift in ocean currents (Watanuki et al, 2009). Diets of breeding birds at Alaskan colonies consist of the Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus), capelin (Mallotus villosus), Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) and/or greenling (Hexagrammos decagrammus) and change on an inter-and intra-annual basis (Thayer et al, 2008). St Lazaria Island birds breed in a shallow continental shelf environment while Middleton Island birds have access to a more pelagic habitat.…”

Section: Free-living Chicksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feather corticosterone reveals developmental stress in seabirds

Will

Suzuki

Elliott

et al. 2014

Journal of Experimental Biology

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In nest-bound avian offspring, food shortages typically trigger a release of the stress hormone corticosterone (CORT). Recent studies indicate that CORT is passively deposited in the tissue of growing feathers and thus may provide an integrated measure of stress incurred during development in the nest. The current hypothesis predicts that, assuming a constant rate of feather growth, elevated CORT circulating in the blood corresponds to higher levels of CORT in feather tissue, but experimental evidence for nutritionally stressed chicks is lacking. Here, we examined how food limitation affects feather CORT content in the rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca moncerata). We (i) used captive chicks reared on control versus restricted diets, and (ii) applied this technique to free-living chicks with unknown nutritional histories that fledged at three separate colonies. We found that (i) feather growth was not affected by experimentally induced nutritional stress; (ii) captive chicks raised on a restricted diet had higher levels of CORT in their primary feathers; (iii) feather CORT deposition is a sensitive method of detecting nutritional stress; and (iv) free-living fledglings from the colony with poor reproductive performance had higher CORT in their primary feathers. We conclude that feather CORT is a sensitive integrated measure revealing the temporal dynamics of food limitations experienced by rhinoceros auklet nestlings. The use of feather CORT may be a powerful endocrine tool in ecological and evolutionary studies of bird species with similar preferential allocation of limited resources to feather development.

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“…In the North Pacific, the widely distributed rhinoceros auklet Cerorhinca monocerata provides an excellent system to test ideas pertaining to climate change and the match-mismatch hypothesis. The auklets feed mainly on epipelagic fishes within a limited range from the colony (Gaston & Jones 1998, Thayer et al 2008. The relationships between ocean climate, food habits, and reproductive success of rhinoceros auklets differ among British Columbia (Bertram et al 2001, Hedd et al 2006, California (Thayer and Sydeman 2007), and Japan (Deguchi et al 2004a), but the influence of ocean climate on the match or mismatch of predator and prey has yet to be investigated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate-forced seasonal mismatch between the hatching of rhinoceros auklets and the availability of anchovy

Watanuki¹,

Ito²,

Deguchi³

et al. 2009

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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Predator-prey relationships are key to understanding complex marine ecosystem dynamics. The match-mismatch hypothesis posits that predators time energy-intensive activities, such as reproduction, to periods of high food availability. However, predators may be constrained by various ecological or physiological processes, leading to mistimed activities relative to prey availability. We investigated inter-annual variation in the timing of breeding for a piscivorous seabird (rhinoceros auklet Cerorhinca monocerata) in relation to availability of a preferred prey item, Japanese anchovy Engraulis japonicus, using data collected over 18 yr between 1984 and 2006 at Teuri Island in the northern Japan Sea. Our primary goals were (1) to identify the climatic factors that affect the seabirds' timing of breeding, proxied by hatching date, and anchovy seasonal availability, and (2) to quantify the fitness effects of predator-prey matches and mismatches relative to climate variability. Hatching date was later in years with lower spring air temperatures. Auklets switched their feeding from sandlance and juvenile greenling to anchovy when it was transported into the birds' foraging range with the seasonal northern expansion of 13°C warm water from the south. The mismatch between hatching date and the period of high anchovy availability was most pronounced when spring air temperatures were warm, and there was a weak Tsushima (warm) Current. Spring air temperature was influenced by spring atmospheric pressure gradients in the Arctic and northern Eurasia, which drive the east Asian winter monsoon, whereas timing of the Tsushima warm water expansion was influenced by winter surface pressures over the western North Pacific. Chick growth rates, mass at fledging, and overall fledging success (fitness) were lower during mismatch years when the auklets fed less on anchovy. The auklets were constrained to adjust hatching date because the seasonal mismatch appeared to be driven by independent and unpredictable surface pressure patterns.

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Forage fish of the Pacific Rim as revealed by diet of a piscivorous seabird: synchrony and relationships with sea surface temperature

Cited by 41 publications

References 35 publications

Environmental control of the breeding success of rhinoceros auklets at Triangle Island, British Columbia

Environmental control of the breeding success of rhinoceros auklets at Triangle Island, British Columbia

Feather corticosterone reveals developmental stress in seabirds

Climate-forced seasonal mismatch between the hatching of rhinoceros auklets and the availability of anchovy

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