Orientation in the wandering albatross: interfering with magnetic perception does not affect orientation performance

Abstract

After making foraging flights of several thousands of kilometres, wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) are able to pinpoint a specific remote island where their nests are located. This impressive navigation ability is highly precise but its nature is mysterious. Here we examined whether albatrosses rely on the perception of the Earth's magnetic field to accomplish this task. We disturbed the perception of the magnetic field using mobile magnets glued to the head of nine albatrosses and compared their performances with those of 11 control birds. We then used satellite telemetry to monitor their behaviour. We found that the ability of birds to home to specific nest sites was unimpaired by this manipulation. In particular, experimental and control birds did not show significant differences with respect to either foraging trip duration, or length, or with respect to homing straightness index. Our data suggest that wandering albatrosses do not require magnetic cues to navigate back to their nesting sites.

Insight of scent: experimental evidence of olfactory capabilities in the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans)

“…Birds showed a significant response to the experimental displays for the three types of cue presented: olfactory, visual or a combination of the two, indicating that they perceive all types of stimuli. While the finding of visual capabilities comes as no surprise, our simple experimental demonstration of olfactory capabilities in the wandering albatross finds special significance in the number of descriptive investigations and hypotheses that have resulted from the study of albatross behaviour so far (Jouventin and Weimerskirch, 1990;Akesson et al, 2001;Bonadonna et al, 2005;Weimerskirch et al, 2005;Phalan et al, 2007;Nevitt et al, 2008). Among the procellariiforms, most nocturnal species are burrow nesters and possess an acute sense of smell that they use to locate their nest (Bonadonna and Bretagnolle, 2002).…”

Testing the role of sensory systems in the migratory heading of a songbird

“…Only two experiments have tested the effect of pulses in the field: a homing pigeon study indicated a weak effect of magnetic pulses (Beason et al, 1997); and a study on homing bats indicated a clear difference between controls and the critical experimental group (Holland et al, 2008). A number of other field studies in birds have also failed to show an effect of magnetic treatments, which might raise the question of how important the magnetic field is to animals for long distance navigation (Benhamou et al, 2003;Mouritsen et al, 2003;Bonadonna et al, 2005;Gagliardo et al, 2006;Gagliardo et al, 2008). However, the fact that none of our birds migrated on the same day as the treatment was applied (supplementary material TableS1) suggests that in this case any effect might have been masked, as Emlen funnel experiments indicate a gradual return to normal orientation after about 13days.…”

A magnetic pulse does not affect homing pigeon navigation: a GPS tracking experiment

“…A number of tracking studies that tested the navigation ability of Procellariiformes bearing strong magnets on their head failed to find an effect of the treatment on navigation (Benhamou et al, 2003;Bonadonna et al, 2005;Mouritsen et al, 2003), suggesting that they rely on other cues, possibly olfaction, for navigation (Nevitt and Bonadonna, 2005). The only previous tracking study on the effect of magnetic pulses on bird navigation was conducted on catbirds displaced during migration (Holland et al, 2009) and tracked by aerial survey from a light aircraft.…”