Incubation patterns in a central-place forager affect lifetime reproductive success: scaling of patterns from a foraging bout to a lifetime

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 6; no. 3; p. e17760
• Main Authors: Shoji, Akiko, Elliott, Kyle H, Aris-Brosou, Stéphane, Crump, Doug, Gaston, Anthony J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 15.03.2011; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Alca torda; Animal behavior; Animal reproduction; Animals; Aquatic birds; Auks; Biology; Birds; Breeding; Breeding seasons; Breeding success; Canada; Charadriiformes - physiology; Diving - physiology; Environmental conditions; Environmental factors; Environmental impact; Environmental testing; Feeding Behavior - physiology; Female; Ficedula albicollis; Forage; Forages; Foraging behavior; Geography; Hypotheses; Incubation; Information theory; Male; Marine ecology; Models, Biological; Nesting Behavior - physiology; Ocean currents; Ovum - physiology; Predation; Puffinus opisthomelas; Reproduction; Reproduction - physiology; Scaling; Seabirds; Sexual Behavior, Animal - physiology; Starvation; Studies; Synthliboramphus antiquus; Telemetry; Time Factors; Wind speed; Canada
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017760

Long-lived seabirds face a conflict between current and lifelong reproductive success. During incubation shifts, egg neglect is sometimes necessary to avoid starvation, but may compromise the current reproductive attempt. However, factors underlying this decision process are poorly understood. We focus on the ancient murrelet, Synthliboramphus antiquus, an alcid with exceptionally long incubation shift lengths, and test the impact of environmental factors on incubation shift length in relation to reproductive success. Using an information theoretic approach, we show that incubation shift length was a strong predictor of reproductive success for ancient murrelets at Reef Island, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada during the 2007 and 2008 breeding seasons. The most important factors explaining an individual's shift length were egg size, wind speed and the length of the mate's previous shift. Wind speed and tide height were the two most important factors for determining foraging behavior, as measured by dive frequency and depth. Our study demonstrates that (i) species-specific reproductive strategies interact with environmental conditions such as wind speed to form multiple incubation patterns and (ii) maintaining regular incubation shifts is an essential component of reproductive success.