Dunn, Ruth E;
Trevail, Alice M;
Nicoll, Malcolm AC;
Freeman, Robin;
Braman, Charles A;
Clark, Bethany L;
Mitchell, Charlotte;
... Votier, Stephen C; + view all
(2025)
Commuting in crosswinds and foraging in fast winds: the foraging ecology of a flying
fish specialist.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
, 292
(2052)
, Article 20250774. 10.1098/rspb.2025.0774.
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Abstract
Understanding how the behaviour of volant species is influenced by winds is important at a time when global airflow patterns and intensities are shifting. We investigated how wind speeds and directions influenced the flight and feeding events of a flap-gliding seabird during central place trips searching for aerial prey like Exocoetidae flying fish. We deployed GPS accelerometers on red-footed boobies (Sula sula rubripes) in the Chagos Archipelago (Indian Ocean) for 45 foraging trips. By comparing foraging commutes to simulated alternative routes, we demonstrate that birds preferentially selected tailwinds and crosswinds, with stronger selection during the outbound compared with the inbound leg. By selecting favourable winds, birds reached higher ground speeds without having to increase flapping flight. Selecting favourable wind conditions may be an adaptation to tropical pelagic habitats and ephemeral prey. Hidden Markov models, used to characterize behavioural states, revealed that birds were more likely to forage during windier conditions, perhaps aided by increased accessibility of flying fish—which a small sub-sample of bird-borne video cameras revealed were largely caught on the wing. We therefore show how wind has divergent consequences for foraging journeys and feeding events, with implications for understanding the ecological effects of climate change-driven wind alterations.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Commuting in crosswinds and foraging in fast winds: the foraging ecology of a flying fish specialist |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2025.0774 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.0774 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | red-footed booby, energetics, foraging costs, flight behaviour, GPS tracking, movement ecology, seabirds, tropical seabird |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10212137 |
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