Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gilg, Olivier
• Istomina, Larysa
• Heygster, Georg
• Strøm, Hallvard
• Gavrilo, Maria V.
• Mallory, Mark L.
• Gilchrist, Grant
• Aebischer, Adrian
• Sabard, Brigitte
• Huntemann, Marcus
• Mosbech, Anders
• Yannic, Glenn

Titel

Living on the edge of a shrinking habitat: the ivory gull, Pagophila eburnea, an endangered sea-ice specialist

Ist Teil von

• Biology letters (2005), 2016-11, Vol.12 (11), p.20160277-20160277

Ort / Verlag

England: The Royal Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The ongoing decline of sea ice threatens many Arctic taxa, including the ivory gull. Understanding how ice-edges and ice concentrations influence the distribution of the endangered ivory gulls is a prerequisite to the implementation of adequate conservation strategies. From 2007 to 2013, we used satellite transmitters to monitor the movements of 104 ivory gulls originating from Canada, Greenland, Svalbard-Norway and Russia. Although half of the positions were within 41 km of the ice-edge (75% within 100 km), approximately 80% were on relatively highly concentrated sea ice. Ivory gulls used more concentrated sea ice in summer, when close to their high-Arctic breeding ground, than in winter. The best model to explain the distance of the birds from the ice-edge included the ice concentration within approximately 10 km, the month and the distance to the colony. Given the strong links between ivory gull, ice-edge and ice concentration, its conservation status is unlikely to improve in the current context of sea-ice decline which, in turn, will allow anthropogenic activities to develop in regions that are particularly important for the species.