• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Thursday, March 30, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Foraging differences let closely related seabirds coexist

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
December 7, 2016
in Science News
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram
IMAGE

Credit: R. Clarke

How do seabirds share habitat when food is limited? In the case of frigatebirds, size differences drive them to seek different prey. A study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses new technology to explore how closely related Great and Lesser frigatebirds manage to coexist at shared breeding colonies where the need to stick close to their nests prevents them from traveling far in search of food.

Past studies have suggested that Great and Lesser frigatebirds have very similar foraging habits, but ecology's "competitive exclusion principle" suggests that they must not be going after exactly the same food, or one would eventually outcompete the other. New advances in GPS tracking and chemical analysis of birds' tissues allowed Rowan Mott of Australia's Monash University and his colleagues to tease out some of the subtle differences that let these species coexist, and they found that the smaller Lesser Frigatebirds were eating prey items from lower on the food chain than their larger relatives, allowing the two species to subsist on the same resource base.

"As I began reading about frigatebirds, it seemed as if Great Frigatebirds and Lesser Frigatebirds share a remarkably similar foraging strategy. This didn't sit well with my understanding of the competitive exclusion principle and niche partitioning theory," says Mott. "It turns out that the two species of frigatebirds seem to have slight differences in their diet that are related to body size. The larger-bodied Great Frigatebird eats more prey from higher levels of the food chain than the smaller-bodied Lesser Frigatebird, and this relationship is particularly strong when comparing the diet of females with the male diet, because females are considerably larger than males."

Mott and his colleagues carried out their research on an island in the Timor Sea, where they captured birds on their nests during the breeding season, fitting them with GPS devices and collecting feathers and blood for isotope analysis. By analyzing the ratios of nitrogen and carbon isotopes in the birds' tissues, the researchers could glean insights into the types of food they had been eating–for example, predatory fish have higher proportion of a certain nitrogen isotope in their bodies, allowing the researchers to make inferences about prey type.

"Ecologists argue that coexistence of similar species can only persist if populations have more resources than they need or if they use different subsets of resources," according to Acadia University's Dave Shutler, a seabird ecologist not involved in the study. "In the latter case, identifying where and how species partition resources can be challenging for mobile species such as birds; using tracking devices and chemical signatures in tissues, Mott and his collaborators have evaluated differences in diets and spatial use of two species of frigatebirds."

###

"Resource partitioning between species and sexes in Great Frigatebirds and Lesser Frigatebirds" will be available December 7, 2016, at http://americanornithologypubs.org/doi/full/10.1642/AUK-16-184.1 (issue URL http://americanornithologypubs.org/toc/tauk/134/1).

About the journal: The Auk: Ornithological Advances is a peer-reviewed, international journal of ornithology that began in 1884 as the official publication of the American Ornithologists' Union, which merged with the Cooper Ornithological Society in 2016 to become the American Ornithological Society. In 2009, The Auk was honored as one of the 100 most influential journals of biology and medicine over the past 100 years.

Media Contact

Rebecca Heisman
[email protected]

http://www.aoucospubs.org

############

Story Source: Materials provided by Scienmag

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Bright SCIdea group shot

UCL team’s life-saving burn treatment wins Bright SCIdea contest

March 30, 2023
Dr Nisha Mendiratta from the Indian Government department of Science and Technology.

Aston University to support gender equality in Indian universities

March 30, 2023

White-tailed deer blood kills bacteria that causes Lyme disease

March 30, 2023

“Fundamental Life Science Meets Climate, Environment and Sustainability: new bridges, new partnerships, new opportunities”

March 30, 2023
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • ChatPandaGPT

    Insilico Medicine brings AI-powered “ChatPandaGPT” to its target discovery platform

    67 shares
    Share 27 Tweet 17
  • Northern and southern resident orcas hunt differently, which may help explain the decline of southern orcas

    44 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 11
  • Skipping breakfast may compromise the immune system

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11
  • Extinction of steam locomotives derails assumptions about biological evolution

    36 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

UCL team’s life-saving burn treatment wins Bright SCIdea contest

Aston University to support gender equality in Indian universities

White-tailed deer blood kills bacteria that causes Lyme disease

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 48 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In