Breeding failure of seabirds in relation to fish depletion: Is there one universal threshold of food abundance?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 587:235-245 (2018) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12442 Breeding failure of seabirds in relation to fish depletion: Is there one universal threshold of food abundance? Magella Guillemette1, François Grégoire2, Dévrig Bouillet1, Jean-François Rail3, François Bolduc3, Alain Caron1, David Pelletier1,4,* 1Département de biologie et géographie, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Rimouski, QC G5L 3A1, Canada 2Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Mont-Joli, QC G5H 3Z4, Canada 3Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service, Québec, QC G1J 0C3, Canada 4Cégep de Rimouski, Rimouski, QC G5L 4H6, Canada *‑Corresponding author: david.pelletier@cegep-rimouski.qc.ca ABSTRACT: Many populations of seabirds are in decline across the world and one proposed cause is the global collapse of fish stocks. Recently, it has been shown that breeding success starts to decline at some critical threshold (CT) of maximum prey abundance (MPA). Here, we estimated this empirical threshold for a large seabird, the northern gannet Morus bassanus, and discuss its relevance under various conditions. Using a time series starting at the end of the 1970s that included estimated biomass of fish, gannet population and food consumed by gannets, we found a positive and non-linear relationship between fish biomass and breeding success. This correlation was supported by the results of a bio-energetic model indicating that gannets extract a substantial fraction of the available biomass. In addition, distribution and time spent at sea (derived from GPS recordings) increased considerably when food abundance was low. In contrast to the general CT previously proposed (34%), we found that breeding success of gannets started to decline at about 8% of MPA. Moreover, when corrected for the sizes of prey available that may be eaten by the birds and the removal of fish by the fishing industry, the observed threshold was further reduced, indicating that such effects should be included in the context of ecosystem based management. Theoretical considerations are offered to further explain the discrepancy between the results of our study and a previously published meta-analysis, which included the effect of diet on feeding profitability and the effect of population size. KEY WORDS: Bird consumption · Breeding success · Conservation threshold · Fishing impact · Numerical responses · Prey profitability Full text in pdf format Supplementary material PreviousNextCite this article as: Guillemette M, Grégoire F, Bouillet D, Rail JF, Bolduc F, Caron A, Pelletier D (2018) Breeding failure of seabirds in relation to fish depletion: Is there one universal threshold of food abundance?. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 587:235-245. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12442 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 587. Online publication date: January 25, 2018 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2018 Inter-Research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".