Migratory and winter movements of Arctic Alaska breeding Sabine’s Gulls (Xema sabini)

The Sabine’s Gull (Xema sabini) is a pelagic, Arctic-breeding species with
a circumpolar breeding distribution. Little is known about migration
routes for Sabine’s Gulls breeding in the Alaskan Arctic. We tagged
Sabine’s Gulls on their northern Alaska breeding grounds to identify
migration routes and wintering areas and compare geolocators and GPS
pinpoint tags for use on small-bodied gulls. Twelve geolocators were
deployed in northern Alaska in 2011 (Colville River Delta) of which four
were recovered, and five GPS pinpoint tags in 2021 (Qupaluk). Although the
GPS pinpoint tags provided more accurate locations allowing for
finer-scale habitat evaluation, and did not require recapture of birds,
the overall coverage provided by geolocators was superior in this study
given the constraints of the number of locations GPS pinpoint tags can
record. Broadly, the four (one tag failed) tracked Sabine’s Gulls migrated
away from the breeding grounds as expected, passing along the west coast
of Alaska and south along the west coast of the Americas to winter in the
Humboldt Current off the coast of Peru. Our tracked gulls used the same
migratory staging and wintering areas as did Sabine’s Gulls breeding in
the Canadian Arctic (Davis et al., 2016). Such reliance on specific marine
areas presents risks from climate-related changes or ecological damage to
those areas.

搜集汇总

背景与挑战

背景概述

该数据集研究北极阿拉斯加繁殖的萨宾鸥（Xema sabini）的迁徙和冬季移动，通过部署地理定位器和GPS定位标签追踪鸟类，揭示其从阿拉斯加繁殖地沿西海岸向南迁徙至秘鲁沿岸洪堡洋流区越冬的路线，并发现与加拿大北极繁殖种群共享迁徙停歇和越冬区，突显了对特定海洋区域的依赖及其潜在气候和生态风险。数据集包含位置数据、校准数据和原始光数据文件，适用于迁徙生态学和海鸟保护研究。