Seabirds foraging

We now know that some bird taxa use their sense of smell in foraging. These include kiwis, vultures, seabirds, and honey guides. Others, such as seed-burying birds, and oilbirds, most likely use olfaction for finding food. 

Shorebirds use their sense of taste when probing sand for food. The purple sandpiper, Calidris maritima, and the knot, Calidris canutus, forage much longer in jars that contain food buried in sand, or sand with an extract of food, than in jars with plain sand (Gerritsen etal, 1983). Table 12.3 lists the responses of various seabirds to prey odors. 

Foraging by seabirds on an olfactory landscape. American Scientist 87,46-53. 

Nevitt GA, Veit RR, Kareiva P (1995) Dimethyl sulfide as a foraging cue for Antarctic Procellariiform seabirds. Nature 376 680-682... 

More simultaneous measurements of NH3 in the ocean and in the atmosphere are needed to reduce the considerable uncertainties of the ocean/atmosphere flux estimates. The ongoing acidification of the ocean will shift the NH3/NH4 equilibrium to NH. On the one hand this might have implication for the atmospheric distribution of NH3, since the uptake capacity of the ocean will be increased with unknown consequences for chemistry of the atmosphere (e.g. the aerosol formation) over the ocean. On the other hand this might have severe implications for the nitrification rates in seawater because they are influenced by the pH. When the pH drops from 8 to 7, nitrification rates can be reduced by 50% (Huesemann et al., 2002). (One explanation for this is that the ammonia monooxygenase enzyme uses rather NH3 than NH4 as substrate.) Most recently it was suggested that atmospheric NH3 serves as a foraging cue for seabirds such as the blue petrel (Nevitt ei a/., 2006) is an excretion product of... 

Nevitt, G. A., 1999, Olfactory foraging in Antarctic seabirds a species-specific attraction to krill odors. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser 177 235-241. 

Nevitt, G. A., 2000, Olfactory foraging by Antarctic procellariifotm seabirds Life at high Reynolds numbers, Biol. Bull. 196 245-253. 

Nevitt, G. A., 2001, Mechanisms of olfactory foraging in procellariiform seabirds, in Chemical Signals in Vertebrates, vol. 9, A. Marchlewska-Koj, J. L. Lepri and D. Muller-Schwarze, eds.. New York, Plenum Publishing Corp, pp. 27-33. 

Nevitt, G. A., in press, Ol ctory foraging strategies of procellariiform seabirds, in Proceedings of the 23" International Ornithological Congress, Beijing China. 

Nevitt, G. A., and Veit, R. R., 1999, Mechanisms of prey patch detection by foraging seabirds, in Proceedings of the 22 International Ornithological Congress, N. J. Adams and R. H. Slotow, eds., Johaimesburg, South Africa, Birdlife, pp. 2072-2082. 

This behavior was intensified when the volatile fraction of cod liver oil was used as the stimulus. Other seabirds in the area showed no such systematic behavior. Virtually no fulmars or shearwaters appeared during tests with control substances. These data were collected at different times of year and under a wide range of weather conditions during the nonbreeding seasons of the species involved. There were no heavy concentrations uniformly nearby, therefore, and their routine foraging behavior was being... 

Erwin, M. R., 1977, Foraging and breeding adaptations to different food regimes in three seabirds the common tern. Sterna hirundo,. Royal tern. Sterna maxima, and black skimmer, Rynchops niger. Ecology, 58 389-397. 

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