Foraging strategy of the little auk Alle alle throughout breeding season – switch from unimodal to bimodal pattern

Energy and time allocation diff ers between incubation and chick-rearing periods, which may lead to an adjustment in the foraging behaviour of parent birds. Here, we investigated the foraging behaviour of a small alcid, the little auk Alle alle during incubation and compared it with the chick-rearing period in West Spitsbergen, using the miniature GPS (in Hornsund) and temperature loggers (in Magdalenefj orden). GPS-tracking of 11 individuals revealed that during incubation little auks foraged 8 – 55 (median 46) km from the colony covering 19 – 239 (median 120) km during one foraging trip. Distance from the colony to foraging areas was similar during incubation and chick-rearing period. During incubation 89% of foraging positions were located in the zone over shallower parts of the shelf (isobaths up to 200 – 300 m) with sea surface temperature below 2.5 ° C. Th ose environmental conditions are preferred by Arctic zooplankton community. Th us, little auks in the Hornsund area restrict their foraging (both during the incubation and chick-rearing period) to the area under infl uence of cold, Arctic-origin water masses where its most preferred prey, copepod Calanus glacialis is most abundant. Th e temperature logger data (from 4 individuals) indicate that in contrast to the chick-rearing period, when parent birds alternated short and long trips, during the incubation they performed only long trips. Adopting such a fl exible foraging strategy allows little auks to alter their foraging strategy to meet diff erent energy and time demands during the two main stages of the breeding.

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