Patterns of energy acquisition by a central place forager: benefits of alternating short and long foraging trips

Yan Ropert-Coudert, Rory P. Wilson, Francis Daunt and Akiko Kato

Behavioral Ecology, 2004, vol. 15, issue 5, 824-830

Abstract: In some seabirds, foraging trips have been defined as either long or short, with the length of time spent traveling to the foraging area apparently a critical feature in determining foraging trip length. Using logger technology, together with complimentary data from published studies, we investigated traveling and foraging times in 18 free-living Adélie Penguins Pygoscelis adeliae, which were foraging for chicks. Most deep, foraging dives were distributed around the center of the foraging trip. This central tendency was particularly apparent if the cumulative amount of undulations in the depth profile (indicative of prey capture) was considered during deep dives; values started to increase before 20.9% and ceased after 67.2% of the dives had occurred. This concentration of the feeding activity in the middle of the foraging trip indicates that birds traveled to and from a prey patch whose location varied little over the birds' trips. These data form the basis for a simple model that uses traveling and foraging times together with projected rates of prey ingestion and chick and adult gastric emptying to determine that there are occasions when, to optimize rates of prey ingestion while at sea for both adults and chicks, birds should conduct foraging trips of bimodal lengths. Copyright 2004.

Keywords: gastric emptying; seabirds; self-feeding; Spheniscidae; provisioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arh086 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:5:p:824-830

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().