Abstract
Analyzing how animals are distributed in space and time is important to understand the behavioural interactions that underlie population dynamics, especially for highly social species. Thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia) breed in some of the largest and densest colonies of any seabird. Although this bird is known to aggregate at sea, little is known about when, where, and why the birds form aggregations. We examined the spatial and temporal patterns of foraging aggregations during the breeding season through various scales via (1) measurement of the synchrony of arrivals of adults feeding their chicks at the colony, and (2) use of both GPS and camera loggers attached on the birds to examine the proximity of birds at sea. Adult arrivals at the colony were synchronised when bringing capelin (Mallotus villosus), a gregarious pelagic fish, but not when bringing sculpin (primarily Triglops spp.), a solitary benthic fish. Camera loggers revealed very close encounters of foraging conspecific (< 4 m), much closer than what was predicted by chance, despite low prey densities. GPS loggers also showed diffuse at-sea aggregations with minimal distances closer than expected by chance. However, those study birds did not typically share foraging trajectories. We suggest that, at smaller scales, murres form tight groups to increase searching efficiency underwater. At larger scales, murre aggregations are most likely a result of foraging individuals converging in the more prolific areas, either by independently encountering prey hotspots, or by cueing on other foraging birds.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Addison B, Ydenberg RC, Smith BD (2007) Tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) respond to predation danger during colony approach flights. Auk 124(1):63–70
Bairos-Novak KR, Crook KA, Davoren GK (2015) Relative importance of local enhancement as a search strategy for breeding seabirds: an experimental approach. Anim Behav 106:71–78
Bayer RD (1981) Arrival and departure frequencies of great blue herons at two Oregon estuarine colonies. Auk 98:589–595
Bednarz JC (1988) Cooperative hunting in Harris’ hawks (Parabuteo unicinctus). Science 239(4847):1525
Brown CR (1986) Cliff swallow colonies as information centers. Science 234:83–86
Brown RGB, Nettleship DN, Germain P, Tull CE, Davis T (1975) Atlas of eastern Canadian seabirds. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa
Buckley NJ (1997a) Spatial-concentration effects and the importance of local enhancement in the evolution of colonial breeding in seabirds. Am Nat 149(6):1091–1112
Buckley NJ (1997b) Experimental tests of the information-center hypothesis with black vultures (Coragyps atratus) and turkey vultures (Cathartesaura). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 41(4):267–279
Burger AE (1997) Arrival and departure behavior of common murres at colonies: evidence for an information halo? Colon Waterbirds 20:55–65
Cairns DK, Schneider DC (1990) Hot spots in cold water: feeding habitat selection by thick-billed murres. Stud Avian Biol 14:52–60
Campobello D, Hare JF (2007) Information transfer determined by association of neighbours in European bee-eater (Merops apiaster) colonies. Ethol Ecol Evol 19(3):237–243
Cook TR, Gubiani R, Ryan PG, Muzaffar SB (2017) Group foraging in Socotra cormorants: a biologging approach to the study of a complex behavior. Ecol Evol 7(7):2025–2038
Davoren GK, Montevecchi WA, Anderson JT (2003) Search strategies of a pursuit-diving marine bird and the persistence of prey patches. Ecol Monogr 73(3):463–481
Dutilleul P (2011) Spatio-temporal hererogeneity: concepts and analyses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Elliott KH, Gaston AJ (2014) Dive behaviour and daily energy expenditure in thick-billed Murres Uria lomvia after leaving the breeding colony. Mar Ornithol 42:183–189
Elliott KH, Davoren GK, Gaston AJ (2007) The influence of buoyancy and drag on the dive behaviour of an Arctic seabird, the thick-billed murre. Can J Zool 85(3):352–361
Elliott KH, Woo K, Gaston AJ, Benvenuti S, Dall’Antonia L, Davoren GK (2008) Seabird foraging behaviour indicates prey type. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 354:289–303
Elliott KH, Bull RD, Gaston AJ, Davoren GK (2009) Underwater and above-water search patterns of an Arctic seabird: reduced searching at small spatiotemporal scales. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63(12):1773–1785
Eschmeyer WN, Herald ES (1999) A field guide to Pacific coast fishes: North America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston
Fauchald P, Erikstad KE, Skarsfjord H (2000) Scale-dependent predator–prey interactions: the hierarchical spatial distribution of seabirds and prey. Ecology 81(3):773–783
Gaston AJ (2002) Results of monitoring thick-billed murre populations in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, 1976–2000. In: Occasional papers-canadian wildlife service, pp 13–48
Gaston AJ, Nettleship DN (1981) The thick-billed murres of Prince Leopold Island. Canadian Wildlife Service, Ottawa, p 351
Gaston AJ, Ouellet H (1997) Birds and mammals of Coats Island, NWT. Arctic 50:101–118
Gaston AJ, Mallory ML, Gilchrist HG (2012) Populations and trends of Canadian Arctic seabirds. Polar Biol 35(8):1221–1232
Gaston AJ, Elliott KH, Ropert-Coudert Y, Kato A, Macdonald CA, Mallory ML, Gilchrist HG (2013) Modeling foraging range for breeding colonies of thick-billed murres Uria lomvia in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and potential overlap with industrial development. Biol Cons 168:134–143
Gerritsen J, Strickler JR (1977) Encounter probabilities and community structure in zooplankton: a mathematical model. J Fish Board Can 34(1):73–82
Giraldeau LA, Caraco T (2000) Social foraging theory. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Grant JW (1993) Whether or not to defend? The influence of resource distribution. Mar Freshw Behav Phys 23(1–4):137–153
Halliday TR (1980) The extinction of the passenger pigeon Ectopistes migratorius and its relevance to contemporary conservation. Biol Conserv 17(2):157–162
Halliwell B, Uller T, Wapstra E, While GM (2017) Resource distribution mediates social and mating behavior in a family living lizard. Behav Ecol 28(1):145–153
Hipfner JM, Gaston AJ, Smith BD (2006) Regulation of provisioning rate in the thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia). Can J Zool 84(7):931–938
Krebs JR (1974) Colonial nesting and social feeding as strategies for exploiting food resources in the great blue heron (Ardea herodias). Behaviour 51(1):99–134
Lovvorn JR, Watanuki Y, Kato A, Naito Y, Liggins GA (2004) Stroke patterns and regulation of swim speed and energy cost in free-ranging Brünnich’s guillemots. J Exp Biol 207(26):4679–4695
Mehlum F, Hunt GL Jr, Decker MB, Nordlund N (1998) Hydrographic features, cetaceans and the foraging of thick-billed murres and other marine birds in the northwestern Barents Sea. Arctic 51:243–252
Mock DW, Lamey TC, Thompson DB (1988) Falsifiability and the information centre hypothesis. Ornis Scand 19:231–248
Ryan PG, Edwards L, Pichegru L (2012) African penguins Spheniscus demersus, bait balls and the allee effect. Ardea 100(1):89–94
Schuttler SG, Ruiz-López MJ, Monello R, Wehtje M, Eggert LS, Gompper ME (2015) The interplay between clumped resources, social aggregation, and genetic relatedness in the raccoon. Mammal Res 60(4):365–373
Silverman ED, Veit RR, Nevitt G (2004) Nearest neighbors as foraging cues: information transfer in a patchy environment. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 277:25–36
Spiegel O, Leu ST, Bull CM, Sih A (2017) What’s your move? Movement as a link between personality and spatial dynamics in animal populations. Ecol Lett 20(1):3–18
Spieler M (2003) Risk of predation affects aggregation size: a study with tadpoles of Phrynomantis microps (Anura: Microhylidae). Anim Behav 65(1):179–184
Sutton GJ, Hoskins AJ, Arnould JPY (2015) Benefits of group foraging depend on prey type in a small marine predator, the little penguin. PLoS One 10(12):e0144297
R Development Core Team (2018) R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0. http://www.R-project.org
Thiebault A, Mullers RH, Pistorius PA, Tremblay Y (2014) Local enhancement in a seabird: reaction distances and foraging consequence of predator aggregations. Behav Ecol 25(6):1302–1310
Ward P, Zahavi A (1973) The importance of certain assemblages of birds as “information-centres” for food-finding. Ibis 115(4):517–534
Watanuki Y, Daunt F, Takahashi A, Newell M, Wanless S, Sato K, Miyazaki N (2008) Microhabitat use and prey capture of a bottom-feeding top predator, the European shag, shown by camera loggers. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 356:283–293
Waters WE (1959) A quantitative measure of aggregation in insects. J Econ Entomol 52(6):1180–1184
Wilschut LI, Laudisoit A, Hughes NK, Addink EA, Jong SM, Heesterbeek HA, Begon M (2015) Spatial distribution patterns of plague hosts: point pattern analysis of the burrows of great gerbils in Kazakhstan. J Biogeogr 42(7):1281–1292
Wittenberger JF, Hunt GL (1985) The adaptive significance of coloniality in birds. Avian Biol 8:1–78
Acknowledgements
We thank S. Flemming, E. Gongora, A. Patterson, S. Poole, F. St. Aubin, and all other field assistants who took part of the data collection at Coats, as well as J. Nakoolak for keeping us safe from bears. We thank Tony Gaston for revising the manuscript and sharing with us his extensive knowledge on murres. We would also like to thank the Northern Scientific Training Program, Canada Research Chair in Arctic Ecology, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Polar Continental Shelf Project, and the Arctic Institute of North American for funding. R. Amstrong at the Nunavut Research Institute and M. Janssen at Environment Canada helped with logistics. Finally, we thank A. Patterson for revising the early drafts of the manuscript, and K. Lalla, F. Rakic, E. Ste Marie, and F. Van Oordt for help with GPS analyses.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest for any of the authors. All applicable Canadian guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed.
Additional information
Responsible Editor: Y. Cherel.
Reviewed by Undisclosed experts.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brisson-Curadeau, É., Gilchrist, H.G., Takahashi, A. et al. The formation of foraging aggregations in a highly social seabird, the thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia), at small and large scales. Mar Biol 165, 170 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-018-3432-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-018-3432-x