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Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic

Climate warming is rapidly altering marine ecosystems towards a more temperate state on the European side of the Arctic. However, this “Atlantification” has rarely been confirmed, as long-term datasets on Arctic marine organisms are scarce. We present a 19-year time series (1982–2016) of diet sample...

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Autores principales: Vihtakari, Mikko, Welcker, Jorg, Moe, Børge, Chastel, Olivier, Tartu, Sabrina, Hop, Haakon, Bech, Claus, Descamps, Sébastien, Gabrielsen, Geir Wing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5775339/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29352216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-19118-8
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author Vihtakari, Mikko
Welcker, Jorg
Moe, Børge
Chastel, Olivier
Tartu, Sabrina
Hop, Haakon
Bech, Claus
Descamps, Sébastien
Gabrielsen, Geir Wing
author_facet Vihtakari, Mikko
Welcker, Jorg
Moe, Børge
Chastel, Olivier
Tartu, Sabrina
Hop, Haakon
Bech, Claus
Descamps, Sébastien
Gabrielsen, Geir Wing
author_sort Vihtakari, Mikko
collection PubMed
description Climate warming is rapidly altering marine ecosystems towards a more temperate state on the European side of the Arctic. However, this “Atlantification” has rarely been confirmed, as long-term datasets on Arctic marine organisms are scarce. We present a 19-year time series (1982–2016) of diet samples from black-legged kittiwakes as an indicator of the changes in a high Arctic marine ecosystem (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard). Our results highlight a shift from Arctic prey dominance until 2006 to a more mixed diet with high contribution of Atlantic fishes. Capelin, an Atlantic species, dominated the diet composition in 2007, marking a shift in the food web. The occurrence of polar cod, a key Arctic fish species, positively correlated with sea ice index, whereas Atlantic species demonstrated the opposite correlation indicating that the diet shift was likely connected with recent climate warming. Kittiwakes, which gather available fish and zooplankton near the sea surface to feed their chicks, can act as messengers of ecosystem change. Changes in their diet reveal that the Kongsfjord system has drifted in an Atlantic direction over the last decade.
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spelling pubmed-57753392018-01-26 Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic Vihtakari, Mikko Welcker, Jorg Moe, Børge Chastel, Olivier Tartu, Sabrina Hop, Haakon Bech, Claus Descamps, Sébastien Gabrielsen, Geir Wing Sci Rep Article Climate warming is rapidly altering marine ecosystems towards a more temperate state on the European side of the Arctic. However, this “Atlantification” has rarely been confirmed, as long-term datasets on Arctic marine organisms are scarce. We present a 19-year time series (1982–2016) of diet samples from black-legged kittiwakes as an indicator of the changes in a high Arctic marine ecosystem (Kongsfjorden, Svalbard). Our results highlight a shift from Arctic prey dominance until 2006 to a more mixed diet with high contribution of Atlantic fishes. Capelin, an Atlantic species, dominated the diet composition in 2007, marking a shift in the food web. The occurrence of polar cod, a key Arctic fish species, positively correlated with sea ice index, whereas Atlantic species demonstrated the opposite correlation indicating that the diet shift was likely connected with recent climate warming. Kittiwakes, which gather available fish and zooplankton near the sea surface to feed their chicks, can act as messengers of ecosystem change. Changes in their diet reveal that the Kongsfjord system has drifted in an Atlantic direction over the last decade. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-01-19 /pmc/articles/PMC5775339/ /pubmed/29352216 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-19118-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Vihtakari, Mikko
Welcker, Jorg
Moe, Børge
Chastel, Olivier
Tartu, Sabrina
Hop, Haakon
Bech, Claus
Descamps, Sébastien
Gabrielsen, Geir Wing
Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title_full Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title_fullStr Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title_full_unstemmed Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title_short Black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of Atlantification in the Arctic
title_sort black-legged kittiwakes as messengers of atlantification in the arctic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5775339/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29352216
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-19118-8
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