ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5061-4009
Current Organisation
CNRS
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Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-2011
DOI: 10.1890/11-0407.1
Abstract: Breeding animals face important time and energy constraints when caring for themselves and their offspring. For long-lived species, life-history theory predicts that parents should favor survival over current reproductive attempts, thus investing more into their own maintenance than the provisioning of their young. In seabirds, provisioning strategies may additionally be influenced by the distance between breeding sites and foraging areas, and offshore and inshore species should thus exhibit different strategies. Here, we examine the provisioning strategies of an inshore seabird using a long-term data set on more than 200 Little Penguins, Eudyptula minor. They alternated between two consecutive long and several short foraging trips all along chick rearing, a strategy almost never observed for inshore animals. Short trips allowed for regular provisioning of the chicks (high feeding frequency and larger meals), whereas long trips were performed when parent body mass was low and enabled them to rebuild their reserves, suggesting that adult body condition may be a key factor in initiating long trips. Inshore seabirds do use dual strategies of alternating short and long trips, but from our data, on a simpler and less flexible way than for offshore birds.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-12-2021
DOI: 10.1002/ECM.1495
Abstract: Reproductive performance typically improves with age, reaching a plateau at middle age and subsequently declining in older age classes (senescing in iduals). Three potential non‐exclusive mechanisms can explain the improvement in reproductive performance with age: (1) selection (poor quality in iduals are removed from the population with increasing age), (2) constraint (in idual efficiency increases through experience), and (3) restraint (reproductive investment increases with age as the residual reproductive value decreases). While all three mechanisms received strong empirical support, few studies have aimed at teasing apart those hypotheses and understanding their underlying functioning. In little penguins ( Eudyptula minor ), we used a 19‐yr longitudinal dataset on breeding and foraging of more than 450 in iduals to investigate the effect of age on breeding success. We separated within‐in idual from among‐in idual age effects using state‐of‐the‐art statistical methods (within‐subject centering and population change decomposition). We then assessed whether within‐in idual changes in breeding resulted from ontogenetic changes in foraging performances, breeding phenology or access to mates and nest sites. Fidelity and assortative pairing explained the high correlation in male and female ages within a pair. Breeding performances followed a typical bell‐shaped curve with performance increasing up to 8 yr old, before reaching a plateau and subsequently declining after age 16. Both selection and within‐in idual processes occurred, although within‐in idual changes dominated differences in age‐dependent breeding success. The selective appearance had almost no effect (apart from ages 2–3), and selective disappearance mostly affected changes at old ages (above 16), although they were also responsible for the slight increase in reproductive performances from ages 5–8. Focusing on within‐in idual changes, birds exhibited higher performances at middle ages, with birds foraging better, laying earlier and changing partner and nest less often. Their reproductive investment did not vary with age for females and slightly decreased for males. This supports the constraint hypothesis but not the restraint one. Finally, the increase in breeding performances at young ages was explained by the age‐related increase in foraging performances during chick‐rearing and advancement of laying. In contrast, reproductive senescence was defined by a general decrease in bird performances.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 2011
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.140390
Abstract: Using body mass and breeding data of in idual penguins collected continuously over 7 years (2002–2008), we examined carry-over effects of winter body mass on timing of laying and breeding success in a resident seabird, the little penguin ( Eudyptula minor ). The austral winter month of July consistently had the lowest rate of colony attendance, which confirmed our expectation that penguins work hard to find resources at this time between breeding seasons. Contrary to our expectation, body mass in winter (July) was equal or higher than in the period before (‘moult-recovery’) and after (‘pre-breeding’) in 5 of 7 years for males and in all 7 years for females. We provided evidence of a carry-over effect of body mass from winter to breeding females and males with higher body mass in winter were more likely to breed early and males with higher body mass in winter were likely to breed successfully. Sex differences might relate to sex-specific breeding tasks, where females may use their winter reserves to invest in egg-laying, whereas males use their winter reserves to sustain the longer fasts ashore during courtship. Our findings suggest that resident seabirds like little penguins can also benefit from a carry-over effect of winter body mass on subsequent breeding.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 07-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.30.547199
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic and its lock-down measures have resulted in periods of reduced human activity, known as anthropause. While this period was expected to be favorable for the marine ecosystem, due to a probable reduction of pollution, shipping traffic, industrial activity and fishing pressure, negative counterparts such as the increased use of disposable plastic and reduced fisheries surveillance and enforcement could counterbalance these positive effects. Simultaneously, on-land pressure due to human disturbance and tourism should have drastically decreased, potentially benefiting land-based marine breeders such as seabirds. Thus, long-term datasets became crucial to differentiate between historical trends and any evident changes resulting from the anthropause. We analyzed 11 years of data on several biological parameters of little penguins ( Eudyptula minor ) from the Penguin Parade ®, a popular tourist attraction at Phillip Island, Australia. We investigated the impact of anthropogenic activities on penguin behavior during the breeding season measured by (1) distribution at sea, (2) colony attendance, (3) isotopic niche (4) chick meal mass, and (5) offspring investment against shipping traffic and number of tourists. The 2020 lock-downs resulted in a near absence of tourists visiting the Penguin Parade ®, which was otherwise visited by 800,000+ visitors on average per year. However, our long-term analysis showed no effect of the presence of visitors on little penguins’ activities. Surprisingly, the anthropause did not triggered any changes in maritime traffic intensity and distribution in the region. While we found significant inter- and intra-annual variations for most parameters, we detected a negative effect of marine traffic on the foraging efficiency. Our results suggest that environmental variations have a greater influence on the breeding behavior of little penguins compared to short-term anthropause events. Our long-term dataset was key to test whether changes in anthropogenic activities affected the wildlife during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that marine traffic, but not tourist presence, negatively impact the foraging and provisioning behavior of little penguins.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-04-2021
No related grants have been discovered for Claire Saraux.