Albatrosses can memorize locations of predictable fishing boats but favour natural foraging.

ABSTRACT: Human activities generate food attracting many animals worldwide, causing major conservation issues. The spatio-temporal predictability of anthropogenic resources could reduce search costs for animals and mediate their attractiveness. We investigated this through GPS tracking in breeding black-browed albatrosses attracted to fishing boats. We tested for answers to the following questions. (i) Can future boat locations be anticipated from cues available to birds? (ii) Are birds able to appropriately use these cues to increase encounters? (iii) How frequently do birds use these cues? Boats were spatially persistent: birds searching in the direction where they previously attended boats would encounter twice as many boats compared with following a random direction strategy. A large proportion

SUBMITTER: Collet J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7575524 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature