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Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices

Most seabirds are very noisy at their breeding colonies, when aggregated in high densities. Calls are used for individual recognition and also emitted during agonistic interactions. When at sea, many seabirds aggregate over patchily distributed resources and may benefit from foraging in groups. Beca...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Thiebault, Andréa, Pistorius, Pierre, Mullers, Ralf, Tremblay, Yann
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27492779
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30972
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author Thiebault, Andréa
Pistorius, Pierre
Mullers, Ralf
Tremblay, Yann
author_facet Thiebault, Andréa
Pistorius, Pierre
Mullers, Ralf
Tremblay, Yann
author_sort Thiebault, Andréa
collection PubMed
description Most seabirds are very noisy at their breeding colonies, when aggregated in high densities. Calls are used for individual recognition and also emitted during agonistic interactions. When at sea, many seabirds aggregate over patchily distributed resources and may benefit from foraging in groups. Because these aggregations are so common, it raises the question of whether seabirds use acoustic communication when foraging at sea? We deployed video-cameras with built in microphones on 36 Cape gannets (Morus capensis) during the breeding season of 2010–2011 at Bird Island (Algoa Bay, South Africa) to study their foraging behaviour and vocal activity at sea. Group formation was derived from the camera footage. During ~42 h, calls were recorded on 72 occasions from 16 birds. Vocalization exclusively took place in the presence of conspecifics, and mostly in feeding aggregations (81% of the vocalizations). From the observation of the behaviours of birds associated with the emission of calls, we suggest that the calls were emitted to avoid collisions between birds. Our observations show that at least some seabirds use acoustic communication when foraging at sea. These findings open up new perspectives for research on seabirds foraging ecology and their interactions at sea.
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spelling pubmed-49745082016-08-12 Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices Thiebault, Andréa Pistorius, Pierre Mullers, Ralf Tremblay, Yann Sci Rep Article Most seabirds are very noisy at their breeding colonies, when aggregated in high densities. Calls are used for individual recognition and also emitted during agonistic interactions. When at sea, many seabirds aggregate over patchily distributed resources and may benefit from foraging in groups. Because these aggregations are so common, it raises the question of whether seabirds use acoustic communication when foraging at sea? We deployed video-cameras with built in microphones on 36 Cape gannets (Morus capensis) during the breeding season of 2010–2011 at Bird Island (Algoa Bay, South Africa) to study their foraging behaviour and vocal activity at sea. Group formation was derived from the camera footage. During ~42 h, calls were recorded on 72 occasions from 16 birds. Vocalization exclusively took place in the presence of conspecifics, and mostly in feeding aggregations (81% of the vocalizations). From the observation of the behaviours of birds associated with the emission of calls, we suggest that the calls were emitted to avoid collisions between birds. Our observations show that at least some seabirds use acoustic communication when foraging at sea. These findings open up new perspectives for research on seabirds foraging ecology and their interactions at sea. Nature Publishing Group 2016-08-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4974508/ /pubmed/27492779 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30972 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Thiebault, Andréa
Pistorius, Pierre
Mullers, Ralf
Tremblay, Yann
Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title_full Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title_fullStr Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title_full_unstemmed Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title_short Seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
title_sort seabird acoustic communication at sea: a new perspective using bio-logging devices
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4974508/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27492779
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30972
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