The challenges of independence: ontogeny of at-sea behaviour in a long-lived seabird

Abstract

AbstractThe transition to independent foraging represents an important developmental stage in the life cycle of most vertebrate animals. Juveniles differ from adults in various life history traits and tend to survive less well than adults in most long-lived animals. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain higher mortality including that of inadequate/inferior foraging skills compared to adults, young naive individuals combining lack of experience and physical immaturity. Thus a change in behaviour, resulting in an improvement of skills acquired from growing experience, is expected to occur during a period of learning through the immaturity phase. Very few studies have investigated the ontogeny of foraging behaviour over long periods of time, particularly in long-lived pelagic seabirds, due to the difficulty of obtaining individual tracking data over several years. We investigated the foraging behaviour, through activity patterns, during the successive life stages of the endangered Amsterdam albatross by using miniaturized activity loggers on naive juveniles, immatures and adults. Juvenile naïve birds during their first month at sea after leaving their colony exhibited lower foraging effort (greater proportion of time spent sitting on water, higher duration and more numerous bouts on water, and lower duration and less numerous flying bouts). Juveniles reached similar activity values to those of immatures and adults as early as the 2nd-3rd months since independence, suggesting a progressive improvement of foraging performances during the first two months since fledging. We found support for the body-size hypothesis with respect to sex differences in activity parameters according to time elapsed since departure from the colony and month of the year, consistent with the important sexual dimorphism in the Amsterdam albatross. Whatever the life stage considered, activity parameters exhibited temporal variability reflecting the modulation of foraging behaviour possibly linked to both extrinsic (i.e. environmental conditions such as variability in food resources or in wind) and intrinsic (i.e. energetic demands linked to plumage renew during moult) factors.