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Migration and stopover in a small pelagic seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus: insights from machine learning.

ABSTRACT: The migratory movements of seabirds (especially smaller species) remain poorly understood, despite their role as harvesters of marine ecosystems on a global scale and their potential as indicators of ocean health. Here we report a successful attempt, using miniature archival light loggers (geolocators), to elucidate the migratory behaviour of the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus, a small (400 g) Northern Hemisphere breeding procellariform that undertakes a trans-equatorial, trans-Atlantic migration. We provide details of over-wintering areas, of previously unobserved marine stopover behaviour, and the long-distance movements of females during their pre-laying exodus. Using salt-water immersion data from a subset of loggers, we introduce a method of behaviour classification based on Bayesian machine learning techniques. We used both supervised and unsupervised machine learning to classify each bird's daily activity based on simple properties of the immersion data. We show that robust activity states emerge, characteristic of summer feeding, winter feeding and active migration. These can be used to classify probable behaviour throughout the annual cycle, highlighting the likely functional significance of stopovers as refuelling stages.

SUBMITTER: Guilford T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2660961 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) rafting behaviour revealed by GPS tracking and behavioural observations.

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Case Report of Puffinosis in a Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) Suggesting Environmental Aetiology.

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The First Genome of the Balearic Shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus) Provides a Valuable Resource for Conservation Genomics and Sheds Light on Adaptation to a Pelagic lifestyle.

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Manx Shearwater Interferon gamma gene

Project description:sequencing of the Manx Shearwater Interferon gamma gene

| PRJEB20061 | ENA

Manx Shearwater Interferon gamma gene

Project description:Identification of the Interferon gamma gene in the Manx Shearwater

| PRJEB28347 | ENA

Adaptive regulation of stopover refueling during bird migration: insights from whole blood transcriptomics

Project description:We used transcriptomic information from the whole blood of migrating Garden warblers (Sylvia borin) to identify key regulatory pathways related to adaptations for migration. Birds were temporarily caged during stopover and then sampled twice at different refuelling states (lean vs fat), reflecting different migratory stages (stopover arrival vs departure) after the crossing of an extended ecological barrier.

2023-04-12 | GSE225337 | GEO

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