Régnier T, Wright PJ, Harris MP, Gibb FM, Newell M, Eerkes-Medrano D, Daunt F, Wanless S

Effect of timing and abundance of lesser sandeel on the breeding success of a North Sea seabird community

Understanding how predator breeding success is affected by prey phenology and abundance is important to the development of ecosystem-based management approaches that consider climate change. In the North Sea, the black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla, Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica, common guillemot Uria aalge, razorbill Alca torda and European shag Gulosus aristotelis have distinct feeding ecologies and breeding schedules but all rely on the lesser sandeel Ammodytes marinus. Régnier and co-workers found that both sandeel abundance and synchrony between juvenile sandeel availability and seabird incubation and chick-rearing periods influenced hatching and fledging success in most of the studied seabird species. The effects of trophic asynchrony were either reinforced or compensated by sandeel abundance and the effects were more pronounced in the most sandeel reliant seabirds.

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