There is considerable interest in using seabirds to enhance the identification of ecologically significant marine areas. A habitat association, thus, is a study that is used in the examination of the biological and the physical features of the marine surroundings across time and space to enhance the understanding of the mode in which the oceanography results or instead creates the habitat of the predators, that is majorly the top predators. The latter predators, the top predators, have been majorly associated with the oceanography pattern features that entail the temperatures, ocean currents, topography sea floor, and the salinity of the ocean. Favorable conditions enhance prey aggregation in various patches, creating spots for predators since they influence prey availability and abundance. The latter aspects also influence predator species’ abundance in the various feeding places or grounds.
Moreover, the distribution of the prey vertically in the column of water enhances the limitation of the availability to the predators, which is majorly dependent on the feeding technique of the prey. For instance, the surface feeders necessitate that the prey concentrates at the surface to enhance accessibility. At the same time, the divers can thus access the prey below the surface of the water (Sustaita et al., 2018). It can be much more complex to sample the abundance and density of the prey species; thus, the copepod communities can be considered indicators that enhance the entire habitat’s primary productivity. The energy density and the copepod are responsible for influencing the amount of energy available to the predators in the various fields of prey. Copepods are generally a source of Food for various marine birds and also the prey that they feed on, and thus. As a result, the community composition and the distribution of the copepods can highly influence the birds’ abundance or availability.
Within fundy bay, variables associated with the oceanography exhibit a wide seasonal variation that occurs daily due to the intense semi-diurnal tidal currents and the exclusive benthic bathymetry of the regions in the southern parts. The latter features enhance the creation of the smaller scale front, the eddies that enhance the distribution of the nutrients and the upwellings. The nutrients can thus be used to support the prey aggregations that, in turn, highly attract a larger population of sea birds. Most marine birds, including the sea ducks that form part of the merginae family, rely on the coastal waters of fundy bay to enhance the creation of stopover feeding grounds in their fall and spring migrations (Skala, 2018). The latter stated family, the merginae family, majorly entails the Surf scoter, mostly the coastal bottom gleaners that mainly feed on the crustaceans and mussels. Thus, this study focuses on understanding how the abundance of merginae, majorly the sea duck’s family in a fundy bay, relates to the quality of habitat on a fine scale. In order to respond to the latter, the following research analysis provides various research methodologies and procedures that will enhance the effectiveness of the latter research.
Methodologies
Study Species and Study Area
This study majorly focused on one sea duck species and the sea birds. Majorly the eco-regions of study entailed the Bay of Fundy and the Labrador shelf. The sea bird colony data were obtained from the entire provinces. Tracking data were obtained from academic researchers and government from the entire provinces except for the Island of prince Edward (Locke et al., 2018). The study was carried out on the 14 species of sea birds in Canadian Atlantic, while five of the species foraged guilds. Most of the species of study encompassed or instead consisted of most of the seabird species, whereby there was sufficient tracking data.
Data Colony
A more comprehensive seabird colony database from the climatic and environmental changes consisted of more than 9000 records of the colony. This research analysis only entailed the Gulf of St Lawrence colonies while excluding the colonies from the northern arctic of the coastlines. From the latter aspect, the researchers extracted the most significant colony size for every site and the species at every site within 20 years. Concerning the precautionary approach, the selection of the largest available size of the population for every species at every site within the stated period, this research report provides an account for the variations concerning the timing of surveys, methods of survey, the declining colonies that are likely to cover and the cyclical nature of some given population (Mersmann, 2022). While including the data from the most recent 20 years, the data collected thus was a representation of both past and current colony locations and thus helped in the identification of both the significance and the range of the possibilities of the colonies, that is, if there was the disappearance of some colonies. The latter selection also ensured that the less frequently visited colony sites were included in the analysis.
Data Tracking
Tracking of data was majorly obtained from a tag of 520 from 13 sites, which enhanced the provision of 43 independent datasets. At the time, the latter aspects entailed all known telemetry studies with the device enabling geographic positions of the breeding seabirds from the significant common eiders, that is, the USA, and some from France in the Leach’s storm -petrel from the colony. Species were also tracked with distinct tags, each having its location frequency and accuracy. Though there was a considerable variation in the frequency of the location data among various tag types and species, the was a predictive modeling analysis that was carried out at the colony level, thus making it difficult to maintain the maximum amount of the research data at every site but ensured that there existed consistent processing amongst the people within the site of the specific combination. Regarding data quality considerations, ten species were accurately tracked using the GPS tags that provided the results based on the expected positional accuracy.
While there was a wide range of species in this research study that was associated with some aspects of variability in the technology of tracking and the size of the sample, this research provides a qualitative assessment of the reliability of data that is majorly used in the assessment of the foraging ranges and the inputs to various models of distribution predictively (Dobrowolska & Minervini, 2021). Every study species provided a quality score for tracking the data, the completeness, and the colony data accuracy. Thus, this assessment enhances the facilitation and provides an understanding of the reliability of the possible results.
Results
Tracking of data from a group of 520 yielded 9290 bird-tracking days while providing 390460 locations after the filtration of the locations for the attendance colony. Tracking efforts varied widely among the species based on the type of tags used and the number of years tracked. The relative data quality of tracking and colony used in the study highlight some significant differences amongst the species groups. The common eiders recorded the lowest quality score due to the limited availability of data tracking. Nevertheless, there is much expectation that the predictive distribution model would be higher concerning the variations in the data density because the tracking positions were also counted and hence represented as the relative densities within the analysis grid.
Discussion
Data tracking from 520 birds illustrated variability in the ranges of the foraging perspectives among the site and the species. However, they enhanced the provision of a robust dataset to enhance the distribution modeling around the colonies (Finch, 2020). The tracking data enhanced the regression boosting of the tree method since it was possible to describe various foraging distributions for most of the colonies and the sea birds in the Canadian Atlantic. Ranges of foraging and the shoreline distance helped in the description of the species by the highlight and guilds than the use of space. The use of the predictive density surface modeling helped map the spatial footprint for the breeding seabirds, which enhanced the toolkit and the conservation planning opportunities at the landscape scale rather than the use of the site approach that is majorly observed from personal dataset tracking.
References
Dobrowolska, A., & Minervini, P. (2021, June). Neural Concept Formation in Knowledge Graphs. In 3rd Conference on Automated Knowledge Base Construction.
Finch, R. (2020, August). Folk Taxonomy of Japanese Birds. In Man and Nature in the Altaic World.: Proceedings of the 49th Permanent International Altaistic Conference, Berlin, July 30–August 4, 2006 (Vol. 12, p. 116). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.
Locke, S. A., Van Dam, A., Caffara, M., Pinto, H. A., López-Hernández, D., & Blanar, C. (2018). Nuclear and mitochondrial phylogenomics of the Diplostomoidea and Diplostomida (Digenea, Platyhelminthes) 1. bioRxiv, 333518.
Mersmann, J. R. (2022). Garden Hunting, Landscape Theory, and Food at the Range Site, IL (Doctoral dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
Skála, V. (2018). Influence of bird schistosome Trichobilharzia regent on hemocyte activity of lymnaeid snails.
Sustaita, D., Rico-Guevara, A., & Hertel, F. (2018). Foraging Behavior. Ornithology: Foundation, Analysis, and Application, pp. 439–492.
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