Yan Ropert-Coudert

Trends and perspectives in animal-attached remote sensing

Animal-attached remote sensing, or bio-logging, refers to the deployment of autonomous recording tags on free-living animals, so that multiple variables can be monitored at rates of many times per second, thereby generating millions of data points over periods ranging from hours to years. Rapid advances in technology are allowing scientists to use data-recording units to acquire huge, quantitative datasets of behavior from animals moving freely in their natural environment. In other words, scientists can examine wild animals in the field, behaving normally, with the same rigor that is normally used in the laboratory. The flexibility of such recording systems means that bio-logging science operates at the interface of several biological disciplines, looking at a wide array of aquatic, airborne, and terrestrial species, monitoring not only the physical characteristics of the environment, but also the animals reactions to it. This approach is critically important in an era when global change threatens the survival of species and where habitat loss is leading to widespread extinctions.

Rush and grab strategies in foraging marine endotherms: the case for haste in penguins

The speed at which air-breathing marine predators that forage by diving should swim is likely to depend on a variety of factors that differ substantially from those relevant in animals for which access to oxygen is unlimited. We used loggers attached to free-living penguins to examine the speed at which three species swam during periods searching for prey and compared this to their speeds during actual prey pursuit. All penguin species appeared to travel at similar speeds around 2 m/s during normal commuting between the surface and feeding depths, which accords closely with minimum costs of transport. However, Adelie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, slowed down to feed, Magellanic penguins, Spheniscus magellanicus, speeded up and king penguins, Aptenodytes patagonicus, travelled at a variety of speeds, although mean speed did not change from normal commuting. Since energy expenditure, and therefore oxygen usage, in swimming animals increases with the cube of the speed, we hypothesized that prey escape speed (a function of prey size) and prey density would prove critical in determining optimum pursuit speeds in predators. Simple models of this type help explain why it is that some penguin species apparently benefit by increasing speed to capture prey while others benefit by decreasing speed.

Impact of Externally Attached Loggers on the Diving Behaviour of the King Penguin

The impact of relatively small externally attached time series recorders on some foraging parameters of seabirds was investigated during the austral summer of 1995 by monitoring the diving behaviour of 10 free‐ranging king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) over one foraging trip. Time‐depth recorders were implanted in the abdominal cavities of the birds, and half of the animals also had dummy loggers attached on their backs. Although most of the diving behaviour was not significantly affected by the external loggers ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

Regulation of Trip Duration by an Inshore Forager, the Little Penguin (Eudyptula Minor), During Incubation

P> 0.05

Decision-rules for leaping Adélie penguins ( Pygoscelis adeliae )

\end{document} ), the birds with externally attached loggers performed almost twice as many shallow dives, between 0 and 10 m depth, as the birds without external loggers. These shallow dives interrupted more frequently the deep‐diving sequences in the case of birds with external loggers (percentage of deep dives followed by deep dives: 46% for birds with implants only vs. 26% for birds with an external attachment). Finally, the distribution pattern of the postdive durations plotted against the hour of the day was more heterogeneous for the birds with an external package. In addition, these penguins had extended surfacing times between two deep dives compared to birds without external attachments ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape

SHORT UNDERWATER OPENING OF THE BEAK FOLLOWING IMMERSION IN SEVEN PENGUIN SPECIES

P< 0.0001