USAP-DC

Nontechnical abstract: This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award recommendation, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget that supports scientists at institutions in their respective countries. Understanding biological responses to environmental variation is a fundamental challenge facing ecologists. To generate accurate predictions of species distribution and persistence it is necessary to understand how mechanisms such as organism interactions and physiological traits shape responses. Seabirds are key consumers in the Southern Ocean, and while changes in their populations have been correlated with environmental modes, the mechanisms underlying these relationships are not well understood. Both ocean and atmosphere conditions are important for seabirds as they forage at sea but breed on land, and changes to wind patterns and Antarctic sea ice location and extent will influence seabird life history. This project focuses on giant petrels (Macronectes spp.), large and dominant avian predators and scavengers that prey significantly on, and influence populations of, species such as penguins and albatrosses. Giant petrels are thought to rely on dynamic soaring for flight, which allows them to use the wind to move while expending little energy. However, quantitative studies demonstrating how giant petrels use wind and the role that wind plays in constraining their distribution are lacking. Also, recent studies suggest that giant petrels may rely on sea ice for foraging, but the impact of sea ice seasonal and temporal dynamics on their population is not clear. Knowledge of the mechanistic links through which sea ice and wind conditions influence giant petrel diet, habitat use, and predation pressure can improve predictive capability for their populations in Southern Ocean ecosystems. Technical Abstract: This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award recommendation, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget that supports scientists at institutions in their respective countries. Despite their important ecological roles as predators and scavengers, giant petrels have received far less attention than other well-studied Southern Ocean seabird species such as albatross. This research will improve the current understanding of giant petrel ecology in the Southern Ocean by developing a mechanistic model linking environmental variability in wind and sea ice with foraging energetics. The project also aims to link those environmental drivers with petrel predation pressure on penguins and albatrosses and assess implications for population trends. The project approach will enable connection of individual energetics with landscape-scale environmental variability and will provide new insight into the role of environmental variation in structuring biological processes. Understanding the environmental effects on threatened seabird population foraging may be useful for developing effective management plans. The project will also provide a science communication internship for a graduate student, work with a science journalist to generate feature articles for popular wildlife magazines, and utilize parts of the project dataset in a graduate-level environmental modeling course. This award reflects NSF''s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation''s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Person	Role
Thorne, Lesley	Investigator and contact

Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems

Award # 2444342

USAP-2444342_1

None in the Database