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How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures

Measuring the costs of soaring, gliding and flapping flight in raptors is challenging, but essential for understanding their ecology. Among raptors, vultures are scavengers that have evolved highly efficient soaring-gliding flight techniques to minimize energy costs to find unpredictable food resour...

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Autores principales: Duriez, Olivier, Kato, Akiko, Tromp, Clara, Dell'Omo, Giacomo, Vyssotski, Alexei L., Sarrazin, François, Ropert-Coudert, Yan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3893159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24454760
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084887
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author Duriez, Olivier
Kato, Akiko
Tromp, Clara
Dell'Omo, Giacomo
Vyssotski, Alexei L.
Sarrazin, François
Ropert-Coudert, Yan
author_facet Duriez, Olivier
Kato, Akiko
Tromp, Clara
Dell'Omo, Giacomo
Vyssotski, Alexei L.
Sarrazin, François
Ropert-Coudert, Yan
author_sort Duriez, Olivier
collection PubMed
description Measuring the costs of soaring, gliding and flapping flight in raptors is challenging, but essential for understanding their ecology. Among raptors, vultures are scavengers that have evolved highly efficient soaring-gliding flight techniques to minimize energy costs to find unpredictable food resources. Using electrocardiogram, GPS and accelerometer bio-loggers, we report the heart rate (HR) of captive griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus and G. himalayensis) trained for freely-flying. HR increased three-fold at take-off (characterized by prolonged flapping flight) and landing (>300 beats-per-minute, (bpm)) compared to baseline levels (80–100 bpm). However, within 10 minutes after the initial flapping phase, HR in soaring/gliding flight dropped to values similar to baseline levels, i.e. slightly lower than theoretically expected. However, the extremely rapid decrease in HR was unexpected, when compared with other marine gliders, such as albatrosses. Weather conditions influenced flight performance and HR was noticeably higher during cloudy compared to sunny conditions when prolonged soaring flight is made easier by thermal ascending air currents. Soaring as a cheap locomotory mode is a crucial adaptation for vultures who spend so long on the wing for wide-ranging movements to find food.
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spelling pubmed-38931592014-01-21 How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures Duriez, Olivier Kato, Akiko Tromp, Clara Dell'Omo, Giacomo Vyssotski, Alexei L. Sarrazin, François Ropert-Coudert, Yan PLoS One Research Article Measuring the costs of soaring, gliding and flapping flight in raptors is challenging, but essential for understanding their ecology. Among raptors, vultures are scavengers that have evolved highly efficient soaring-gliding flight techniques to minimize energy costs to find unpredictable food resources. Using electrocardiogram, GPS and accelerometer bio-loggers, we report the heart rate (HR) of captive griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus and G. himalayensis) trained for freely-flying. HR increased three-fold at take-off (characterized by prolonged flapping flight) and landing (>300 beats-per-minute, (bpm)) compared to baseline levels (80–100 bpm). However, within 10 minutes after the initial flapping phase, HR in soaring/gliding flight dropped to values similar to baseline levels, i.e. slightly lower than theoretically expected. However, the extremely rapid decrease in HR was unexpected, when compared with other marine gliders, such as albatrosses. Weather conditions influenced flight performance and HR was noticeably higher during cloudy compared to sunny conditions when prolonged soaring flight is made easier by thermal ascending air currents. Soaring as a cheap locomotory mode is a crucial adaptation for vultures who spend so long on the wing for wide-ranging movements to find food. Public Library of Science 2014-01-15 /pmc/articles/PMC3893159/ /pubmed/24454760 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084887 Text en © 2014 Duriez et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Duriez, Olivier
Kato, Akiko
Tromp, Clara
Dell'Omo, Giacomo
Vyssotski, Alexei L.
Sarrazin, François
Ropert-Coudert, Yan
How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title_full How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title_fullStr How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title_full_unstemmed How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title_short How Cheap Is Soaring Flight in Raptors? A Preliminary Investigation in Freely-Flying Vultures
title_sort how cheap is soaring flight in raptors? a preliminary investigation in freely-flying vultures
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3893159/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24454760
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0084887
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