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A Hard Breeding Season Bought Chicks and Cost Survival
An Alaska field experiment linked raised flight costs to earlier, longer migration, better next-year breeding and lower return rates.
Summary
An Alaska field experiment linked raised flight costs to earlier, longer migration, better next-year breeding and lower return rates.
Researchers altered the breeding-season energy burden of black-legged kittiwakes by supplementing food, clipping selected feathers or leaving birds as controls, then tracked them across years. High-cost birds fledged fewer chicks immediately, departed earlier and migrated farther; those longer migrations predicted greater breeding success the next year, but only 67% returned, compared with 83% of controls and 90% of fed birds. The experiment supports an energetic trade-off in one colony rather than a universal seabird rule.
Why it matters
An Alaska field experiment linked raised flight costs to earlier, longer migration, better next-year breeding and lower return rates.
Limits and context
- High-cost birds fledged fewer chicks immediately, departed earlier and migrated farther; those longer migrations predicted greater breeding success the next year, but only 67% returned, compared with 83% of controls and 90% of fed birds.
Key claims
An Alaska field experiment linked raised flight costs to earlier, longer migration, better next-year breeding and lower return rates.
Qualification: High-cost birds fledged fewer chicks immediately, departed earlier and migrated farther; those longer migrations predicted greater breeding success the next year, but only 67% returned, compared with 83% of controls and 90% of fed birds.
Evidence: source-2026-07-27-010
Sources
- Nagoya University via EurekAlert: Kittiwake energetic flexibilityNagoya University via EurekAlert · official announcement
Corrections
No corrections have been recorded for this story.