Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026
07:39
A Video Surveillance System to Monitor Breeding Colonies of Common Terns (Sterna Hirundo)
Published on: July 22, 2018
A mechanistic link between chick diet and decline in seabirds?
Alexander S Kitaysky1, Evgenia V Kitaiskaia, John F Piatt
1Department of Biology and Wildlife, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Irving 311, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA. ffask@uaf.edu
Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|April 18, 2006
Summary
Low-lipid diets impair young seabirds' cognitive abilities and increase stress hormones, leading to poor recruitment. This study links nutritional stress in red-legged kittiwakes to population declines.
Area of Science:
- Marine Biology
- Avian Ecology
- Nutritional Science
Background:
- A 1970s North Pacific climate shift reduced lipid-rich fish, impacting seabird prey.
- Kittiwake populations declined dramatically on the Pribilof Islands following this shift.
- Previous research noted population decline but lacked a mechanism for recruitment failure.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of lipid-poor diets on the development and cognitive function of young red-legged kittiwakes (Rissa brevirostris).
- To elucidate the physiological and behavioral mechanisms linking diet quality to seabird recruitment and survival.
Main Methods:
- Experimental feeding of young red-legged kittiwakes with lipid-rich versus lipid-poor diets.
- Monitoring of growth rates, stress hormone levels (corticosterone), and cognitive performance (associating food with visual cues).
Main Results:
- Kittiwakes fed lipid-poor diets exhibited significant growth retardation.
- Increased secretion of stress hormones was observed in the lipid-poor diet group.
- Impaired ability to associate food distribution with visual cues was evident in chicks on lipid-poor diets.
Conclusions:
- Diets deficient in lipids during development induce nutritional stress and cognitive deficits in young seabirds.
- These impairments likely reduce the quality of fledglings, leading to increased mortality and reduced population recruitment.
- The findings provide a mechanism explaining kittiwake population declines linked to climate-driven changes in prey availability.
Related Concept Videos
02:07Conservation of Declining Populations
Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.
00:48Optimal Foraging
How animals obtain and eat their food is called foraging behavior. Foraging can include searching for plants and hunting for prey and depends on the species and environment.
01:39Keystone Species
Measures of species biodiversity, such as richness (i.e., the number of species present) and evenness (i.e., their relative abundance), describe an ecological community’s structure. Many factors affect community structure, including abiotic factors (e.g., sunlight and nutrients), disturbances (e.g., fire or flood), species interactions (e.g., predation or competition), and chance events (e.g., foreign species invasion). Certain species—such as keystone species—also play a pivotal role in the...