Recently-adopted foraging strategies constrain early chick development in a coastal breeding gull.

ABSTRACT: Human-mediated food sources offer possibilities for novel foraging strategies by opportunistic species. Yet, relative costs and benefits of alternative foraging strategies vary with the abundance, accessibility, predictability and nutritional value of anthropogenic food sources. The extent to which such strategies may ultimately alter fitness, can have important consequences for long-term population dynamics. Here, we studied the relationships between parental diet and early development in free-ranging, cross-fostered chicks and in captive-held, hand-raised chicks of Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus fuscus) breeding along the Belgian coast. This traditionally marine and intertidal foraging species is now increasingly taking advantage of human activities by foraging on terrestrial fo

SUBMITTER: Sotillo A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6626513 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature