Some seabirds have a great sense of smell. 'Tubenoses’ such as petrels, shearwaters, fulmars and albatrosses can sniff-out chemicals released by far-off marine prey. This includes the scent of krill – a major food source for seabirds and many other creatures in the Southern Ocean.
But different species vary in how much they follow their ‘nose’ in this way. Black-browed albatrosses use eyesight more to detect where other seabirds are foraging. Scent-guidance is more important for white-chinned petrels, which often flock with the black-brows. According to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this is a dream team.
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If finding small patches of food in a vast expanse of ocean is tricky, so is trying to track the foragers. To tackle this, researchers themselves combined skill sets and used computer models to simulate seabird interactions.
Gabrielle Nevitt from the University of California is a sensory ecologist and an expert in how birds sense and respond to environmental cues in the Southern Ocean. Jesse Granger from Duke University is adept at computer modelling and could use Gabrielle’s knowledge to set up different combinations of species and activity. “You treat each animal sort of like it’s a video game character,” she says. “You give it rules about how it should behave and then you get this emergent behaviour.”
By setting-up four different scenarios, including one where birds foraged only by smell, the researchers could detect patterns that would be tricky to spot at sea.
Results were clear: a mix of sight-guided and scent-following species in one flock improves foraging success over what those species could achieve alone. High success remains even in a group with only a few smell-focused birds in it.
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So black-browed albatrosses and white-chinned petrels in a mixed flock are likely benefitting each other in what the researchers call a ‘multispecies sensory network’. This adds a new dimension to thinking about how seabirds interact and how some that might be overlooked could benefit others.
Big, charismatic species such as albatrosses are often the focus of conservation efforts. But smaller, more cryptic seabird species could also be vital parts of the social network that sustains both themselves and others.
Top image: A flock of multiple species of seabirds on the Southern Ocean. Credit: Fernando Anido
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