The question of early/late breeders in colonial species is a pretty hot topic in behavioral ecology, and gets even hotter in the context of climate change, when many species exhibit shifts in their phenology which can affect their breeding success.
The Little auk (Alle alle) is an Arctic seabird which, due to the short Arctic summer, exhibits a fairly high phenological synchrony at colony level (i.e. eggs are laid/hatched within 1-2 weeks). However, within a colony some pairs will lay/hatch their egg before or after the colony median date. Being an early or late breeder may have important consequences on the birds’ fitness as, for example, marginal pairs may be more exposed to predation (paper 1) or mismatch with food availability for their offspring (paper 2 & paper 3). In addition to that, preliminary studies (unpublished) showed that early and late breeders remain as such over multiple seasons, and this despite some interannual shifts in the colony median (sometimes a week difference between years).
Thus, and given the fact that Little auks exhibit high fidelity to their nest and partner, this suggests that their breeding phenology might be influenced by some characteristics of the pair such as, for example, the location of the nest, the age of the pair or other life history traits. This project therefore aims to investigate the consequences and drivers of different breeding phenology in the Little auk.
This question is particularly interesting for the Little auk, given its breeding range (Arctic ecosystem is changing more dramatically than everywhere else) and its ecological importance (as a keystone species of the Atlantic Arctic).
People: Léa Ribeiro (student), Marion Devogel (supervisor), Katarzyna Wojczulanis-Jakubas (supervisor), Antoine Grissot (co-worker), Dariusz Jakubas (co-worker), Dorota Kidawa (co-worker), Martyna Syposz (co-worker)
POLar Ecology Group 