A bird's-eye view on turbulence: seabird foraging associations with evolving surface flow features.

ABSTRACT: Understanding physical mechanisms underlying seabird foraging is fundamental to predict responses to coastal change. For instance, turbulence in the water arising from natural or anthropogenic structures can affect foraging opportunities in tidal seas. Yet, identifying ecologically important localized turbulence features (e.g. upwellings approximately 10-100 m) is limited by observational scale, and this knowledge gap is magnified in volatile predators. Here, using a drone-based approach, we present the tracking of surface-foraging terns (143 trajectories belonging to three tern species) and dynamic turbulent surface flow features in synchrony. We thereby provide the earliest evidence that localized turbulence features can present physical foraging cues. Incorporating evolving vorticity an

SUBMITTER: Lieber L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8079999 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature