Tidal drift removes the need for area-restricted search in foraging Atlantic puffins

Understanding how animals forage is a central objective in ecology. Theory suggests that where food is uniformly distributed, Brownian movement ensures the maximum prey encounter rate, but when prey is patchy, the optimal strategy resembles a Lévy walk where area-restricted search (ARS) is intersper...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biology letters (2005) 2019-07, Vol.15 (7), p.20190208-20190208
Main Authors: Bennison, Ashley, Quinn, John L, Debney, Alison, Jessopp, Mark
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Charadriiformes
Diving
Ecosystem
Feeding Behavior
Food
Marine Biology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Understanding how animals forage is a central objective in ecology. Theory suggests that where food is uniformly distributed, Brownian movement ensures the maximum prey encounter rate, but when prey is patchy, the optimal strategy resembles a Lévy walk where area-restricted search (ARS) is interspersed with commuting between prey patches. Such movement appears ubiquitous in high trophic-level marine predators. Here, we report foraging and diving behaviour in a seabird with a high cost of flight, the Atlantic puffin ( Fratercula arctica), and report a clear lack of Brownian or Levy flight and associated ARS. Instead, puffins foraged using tides to transport them through their feeding grounds. Energetic models suggest the cost of foraging trips using the drift strategy is 28-46% less than flying between patches. We suggest such alternative movement strategies are habitat-specific, but likely to be far more widespread than currently thought.
ISSN:1744-9561
1744-957X
DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2019.0208