If there is one field site that defines the best of what the HAGRG has been able to accomplish, it’s Nasaruvaalik Island. Tiny in size, but hugely influential in terms of the volume and diversity of published data that over a decade of field work has produced. Check out this beautifully written summary from HAGRG founding member Mark Mallory in the latest issue of Arctic Science.
For an idea of what we’ve been able to accomplish, check out the site listing here!
Prince Leopold Island has been called ‘the crown jewel’ of Canada’s Arctic seabird colonies. Spectacularly situated at the mouth of Lancaster Sound, this site is legendary for its diversity of species, its long history going back to the early 1970’s, its treacherous cliffs, and the many great folks who have called this magical place home for a season - or a decade - and contributed to what we know about murres, kittiwakes and fulmars. Check the paper out here, in Arctic Science
Nobody knows more about Ivory gulls in Canada than the authors of this timely synthesis. HAGRG founding member Mark Mallory and long-time collaborator Grant Gilchrist have been studying Ivory gulls for decades. Their recent paper in Arctic Science brings us up to speed on what we know and what remains to be done when it comes to informed conservation of this endangered species.
In a companion piece to our previous work studying Arctic Terns across a wide latitudinal gradient, this new paper highlights the variation in migration timing and ecology between birds from different colonies across North America. Published in the most recent issue of Polar Biology, you can find all the scientific goodness right here.
Sabine’s gulls tracked from Nasaruvaalik Island, NU, offer researchers new insight into how highly migratory species use habitat between their breeding and wintering areas. You can read the whole paper, recently published in Animal Migration here.
Sabine’s gulls fly more than 15,000 km each way between their High Arctic breeding site and only two geographically restricted wintering areas - one off the coast of Peru, the other of the coast of South Africa. While these birds spend most of the year out at sea, how they move across what to us may look like a homogenous, featureless landscape is actually informed by a keen understanding of where to find areas of high marine productivity. Even while individual birds wander widely, all seem to know where reliable places to forage along their migratory routes are and congregate there at certain times of the year.
Arctic Terns are THE ultimate migratory species, travelling further than any other. Some birds travel more than 100,000 km in a single year. Breeding across a broad latitudinal range all around the Arctic, birds range widely. In an effort to gain insight into how individual birds migrate, how populations are connected on a global scale and how they use habitat, we present the most comprehensive tracking study to date on this iconic species.
This project was years in the making and working with all of these amazing folks was truly a gift. Read the paper here, in the latest issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series.
In what will certainly become a definitive meta analysis of tracking data from over 200 studies over the last three decades, this epic paper recently published in Science gives us the most detailed insight yet into how animals move across the Arctic. Read it right here, in the granddaddy of all journals. Kudos to all the authors who worked so hard to collect this data. Truly a monumental accomplishment.
Just what is says on the tin - a beautifully basic paper detailing the first-ever tracking study of one of the Arctic’s least understood species. Working from the incredible colony at St. Helena Island, NU, scientists outfitted adult Thayer’s Gulls with solar powered satellite telemetry tags and reaped the rewards. Read all about it in the most recent issue of Marine Ornithology.
Long-time HAGRG member (and distinguished gentleman of inimitable style) Fabrice Genevois has published yet another critical resource for polar researchers. His new book La Banquise is a definitive reference when it comes to sea ice. From the physical factors affecting the formation and distribution of various forms of ice to the ecological importance of ice as habitat, La Banquise combines cutting-edge research with old-school charm. At once a valuable tool for scientists as well as a fascinating document for armchair ecologists, this latest effort is destined to be an instant classic - well done, Fabrice!
One of the key pieces of information required to accurately asses population trends within a species is the average survival rate - i.e., how likely any individual is to survive any given year. Gathering the data required to determine survival rates is fairly straightforward, but it requires time. The easiest way to go about it involves marking a certain number of individuals (in this case with small metal bands bearing a unique identifying number) and then tracking them over time noting how long each bird is present within that population. There is actually quite a bit of math involved (handled by authors Greg Robertson and Danielle Fife), and catching and re-catching birds every year isn’t necessarily easy, but at least it’s lots of fun! Our efforts over several years at Nasaruvaalik Island have finally paid off, and you can read all about it here in Polar Research!
While Arctic Terns appear to have relatively high survival rates, our analysis suggests that recently noted population declines at some colonies are likely caused by either low juvenile survival or emigration to other colonies. More work is needed to clarify these issues, but this latest paper provides a very useful baseline with which to assess fluctuations and trends within the species.
HAGRG biologist Isabeau Pratte releases a just-tagged tern on Nasaruvaalik Island in the Canadian High Arctic. You can see the small black tag attached to the bird's left leg.
Arctic terns famously undertake the longest migration in the animal kingdom, travelling over 90,000 km per year between their breeding grounds in the Arctic and their wintering grounds around Antarctica. While past studies have revealed the amazing migrations of individual birds from several different breeding areas, we still lack a clear understanding of how the world population of Arctic terns is structured. Many species such as Arctic terns which breed across a vast circumpolar range are often actually made up of distinct sub-populations which breed in specific areas, travel along unique migratory routes, and winter in restricted pockets of the larger range occupied by the species as a whole. Information on the population structure of such species is critical if we are to make informed conservation decisions.
An Arctic tern on its nest at Nasaruvaalik Island, NU
Arctic terns are a common species in many parts of the Arctic, but over the last few decades, scientists from all over the north have been noting slow but steady declines in breeding populations. These declines have not been satisfactorily explained, and a necessary first step is to figure out where the problem seems to be - is it an issue with conditions around breeding sites (reduced foraging opportunities, increased predation, etc...) or does the problem lie at the other end of the world, affecting birds wintering in the Southern Ocean? Before we can answer these questions, we first need to get a better idea of where Arctic terns are actually spending their time when they are not breeding - a 9 to 10 month period during which time they are far out at sea in some of the most inhospitable parts of the planet.
In order clarify the population structure of Arctic terns in North America and learn more about where these birds are wintering and how they get there, the High Arctic Gull Research Group, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute Migratory Connectivity Project and partners across North America, have undertaken a multi-year project to track Arctic terns from all across North America. From Alaska to Nova Scotia, from the High Arctic to the Maritimes, HAGRG collaborators have deployed 124 tracking tags at birds from 6 different colonies. Despite challenging conditions in 2017, the deployment phase of the project was an amazing success! In 2018, scientists will return to the same colonies to try and recover the tags which will have recorded an entire year's worth of data on the movements of each bird. For now, we wish our feathered friends safe travels, fair winds, and following seas.
The breeding range of Arctic Terns in North America is shown in orange. Red stars indicate colonies where HAGRG collaborators deployed tracking tags in 2017.
Seabirds are highly adapted to a marine lifestyle. They obtain all of their food from the ocean, even during the brief periods of the year when they do come to land in order to breed. Most Arctic seabird colonies reflect this trait in that birds choose to nest as close as they possibly can to reliably productive waters in which to feed themselves, and also forage for their chicks. In fact, in years when extensive ice cover forces birds to forage further away from their colonies, many species suffer reduced breeding success.
There are very few species of seabirds known to switch over to a terrestrial diet during the breeding season, but recent research from Nasaruvaalik Island suggests we can add one more to the list....Check out this fascinating paper from Isabeau Pratte et al. that neatly demonstrates how Sabine's gulls can take advantage of regular but unpredictable seasons in which terrestrial prey is readily available by supplementing their otherwise strictly marine diet by eating terrestrial invertebrates.
Ross's gull are, quite literally, one of the most difficult species to study. They nest in places that cost tens of thousands of dollars to even get to, and they only breed in very small numbers if they even bother to breed at all. This is probably why nobody has really spent too much time trying to work with them (barring at least one notable exception). Many would argue that it's hard to justify the time and energy and expense to study such rare and hard to find birds since 'real science' is built on large and robust datasets generated by controlled experiments or extensive sampling which simply cannot be supported by small sample sizes. While old-school observational natural history may have fallen out of favour in recent years (like, since the turn of the last century), that doesn't mean a passive approach is useless. In some cases, careful observation can provide enough circumstantial evidence to at least support a theory, even if it can't also provide the proof. At the very least, it can make us stop and think and carefully consider what we think we already know.
At the end of the day, some of the most interesting aspects of science are those that don't seem to fit into the accepted order of things. So when you see a bird doing something totally crazy, day after day, year after year, you watch it, wonder "why?", and then spend several years mulling it over before submitting your observations and theories to a variety of journals which politely reject your manuscript because it sounds a little loony to re-think some of the most basic notions of evolutionary biology* based on observations of a handful of super rare birds.
We are thrilled that this really cool little paper was picked up by Arctic, and even more thrilled that it was very soon thereafter featured as 'Editor's Choice' in Science. First and foremost it proves that studying even 'impossible to study' species is worthwhile and important, and if nothing else, it reaffirms that sitting around just watching birds can still be a productive thing to do if you are patient and keep an open mind!
*Funny enough, 98% of the theoretical foundations of ecology and evolutionary biology were laid out by the ultimate OG grand-daddy of all observational natural historians who pretty much went for a five year cruise and spent the rest of his life thinking about what he had seen before dropping this little bomb on the world. So just kidding about the post title Charles, you are right about everything, always.
HAGRG member Shanti Davis is lead author on a fascinating new paper, hot off the press in PLoS One, that summarizes some of the surprising results of the most comprehensive tracking study of Sabine's gulls ever. Tracks of individual birds nesting at Nasaruvaalik Island over several years confirm that birds from this site migrate to wintering areas in both the Pacific as well as the Atlantic Ocean. Migratory divides within populations typically occur between colonies, very rarely within them, but even more surprising was the the discovery that this divide even occurs between pairs of birds, one of whom leaves the breeding grounds to fly southwest to Peru, the other of which heads southeast to South Africa!
In addition to filling in some really key gaps in our knowledge of this poorly known species, the results of this study have broader theoretical implications in terms of understanding how birds have colonized the Arctic, and what factors lead to the expansion of breeding ranges into extreme environments.
Check out the paper through the link below!
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0166043
Isabeau Pratte just defended her M.Sc. thesis at Acadia University in Wolfville, and by all accounts absolutely killed it!
Isabeau has been with the HAGRG since 2013, and she has worked on a number of great projects over the years everywhere from Bylot, Nasaruvaalik and Prince Leopold Islands in the High Arctic, to who knows what weird marshes her supervisor Mark Mallory probably had her running around in coastal Nova Scotia. Her M.Sc. thesis however, focused on her studies of alcids on the Gannet Islands in Labrador, where she examined the biology and ecology of murres, puffins and razorbills nesting there. Her work there included tracking, isotope work and physiological measurements, so she pretty much did it all.
Isabeau is one of the most dedicated scientists we know, and we all wish her the best in her future endeavors!
Félicitations Isabeau, sur un travail fantastique, et votre succès très bien mérité!!!
HAGRG members Fabrice Genevois and Mark Maftei met up for some late season scouting in some of the most inaccessible areas in the Canadian High Arctic last month aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov on an exploratory cruise run by Quark Expeditions. After a spectacular summer, winter came in like a lion in 2016, and by September 1st, many areas were covered in snow and sheltered waters were beginning to freeze. Travelling through the High Arctic this late in the season is a rare treat enjoyed by few. Highlights of the voyage included what we presume is a newly discovered colony of black-legged kittiwakes at Cape Dudley Digges in western Greenland, and observations of large flocks of ivory gulls in Norwegian Bay, the latter adding support to the notion that this region supports significant as-of-yet undiscovered colonies of this extremely poorly known species. Brief aerial surveys certainly confirmed large areas of suitable habitat amongst the spectacular nunataks rising out of the Steacie Icefield on Axel Heiberg Island.
2016 saw the HAGRG return to Nasaruvaalik Island to continue ongoing monitoring of ground-nesting seabirds. The focus of our visit this summer was to trap arctic terns for a mark-recapture study in order to determine the annual survival and lifespan of terns breeding in the High Arctic. We know that arctic terns can live to be over 40 years old, but several years of data are needed to refine anecdotal records into a robust and meaningful baseline.
We also took advantage of our time on the island to continue tagging both adult and chick Sabine's gulls. HAGRG member Shanti Davis has collected hundreds of hours of behavioural observations which have revealed a complex and fascinating relationship between related birds. This project was initiated in 2007 by Kelly and Josh Boadway, and to date hundreds of individuals have been banded with unique colour-coded band combinations. Currently, well over 90% of the breeding adults on the island are banded, and in the last few years birds banded as chicks only a few days old in 2011 and 2012 are returning to breed for the first time!
Basic mark-recapture and mark-resight studies like these are a low-tech way of collecting a lot of important information on the biology and ecology of nesting populations. It's a lot of work trapping the birds the first time around, even more work trying to see them afterwards, but in the end, the reward is a unique insight into the relationships between individuals within a colony. Plus, it's a lot of fun :)
The High Arctic Gull Research Group is all about encouraging collaborations that bring together the best people to apply cutting-edge technology in order to study Arctic species. By this logic, Autumn-Lynn Harrison is kind of like the HAGRG represented in human form (as opposed to our more typical state as an amorphous cloud-like thing that smells vaguely of eiders). While most seabird people eventually come around to studying fish, Autumn-Lynn did the opposite - cutting her teeth tracking the denizens of the deep before stepping up into the rarified world birds. She holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on the ecology and conservation of migratory marine predators of the North Pacific, and is now a Research Scientist with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and Program Manager of the Migratory Connectivity Project. Over the last few years, Autumn-Lynn has led a ton of projects focused on tracking a variety of species all across North America - most recently Glaucous Gulls from Barrow, AK.
Autumn-Lynn is an expert on bird tracking technology, and also making movement data universally accessible in order to raise awareness about the conservation concerns affecting many (if not most) migratory species.
Welcome aboard!
It is with extreme pleasure and pride that we welcome our most recent member to the High Arctic Gull Research Group. Iain Stenhouse is a world expert on Arctic birds, an old-school field biologist of the highest calibre, and an all-round awesome guy. He is currently the Senior Science Director at the Biodiversity Research Institute, and he has some serious High Arctic Gull tundra cred having pretty much laid down the foundation for Sabine's gull research in Canada (and later Greenland). Iain and collaborators have also put out some of the hottest tracking papers (here and here) of the last decade, and his expertise is a welcome addition to our team. It should also be mentioned that if there was ever a worthy contender for second place after the undisputed champion of Arctic facial hair, Iain is solid competition. Welcome aboard Iain!
A new paper from the HAGRG led by Isabeau Pratte takes a look at a multi-year dataset to tease out the relationship between the nesting habits of Arctic terns and common eiders on Nasaruvaalik Island. The two most abundant species on the island (and among ground-nesting seabirds in the High Arctic) have totally different life histories and reproductive strategies, and yet they nest side by side in what may be a long-misunderstood relationship. Do eiders rely on terns for protection? Do terns even protect eiders? We'll save you the stats headache and get to the good stuff right here. This most recent paper coming out of Nasaruvaalik Island highlights the importance of long-term data collection - monitoring may not be as exciting as other high-tech fun and games, but it ultimately provides the kind of hard data that lets scientists learn about the more subtle patterns in nature. Nice work IP!