Taking movement data to new depths: Inferring prey availability and patch profitability from seabird foraging...

Area of Science:

• Animal behavior
• Marine ecology
• Bio-logging

Background:

• Tracking technology provides detailed animal movement data.
• This data has potential for inferring foraging habitat use.
• Previous studies have not fully exploited this potential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To infer foraging habitat use from animal movement data.
• To analyze dive patterns of razorbills and common guillemots.
• To understand seabird responses to prey availability.

Main Methods:

• Collected GPS, time-depth recorder, and accelerometer data from seabirds.
• Used a clustering algorithm to identify prey pursuit and capture events.
• Modeled pursuit-capture events in relation to dive characteristics and group dive behavior.

Main Results:

• Razorbills exclusively performed pelagic dives, targeting shallow prey.
• Common guillemots exhibited flexible diving (benthic and pelagic), exploiting deep prey aggregations.
• Analysis revealed distinct foraging strategies between the two species.

Conclusions:

• Novel analysis of movement data offers new insights into food patch exploitation.
• Understanding behavioral ecology behind movement patterns is crucial.
• This approach can help predict animal responses to changing prey distributions.