A GEDAi member within the Short Listed most influencial authors!

Congratulations to Ana Sanz-Aguilar from the GEDAi,  short-listed among the ten most influencial authors in the 'Natural Resouces' area in the Balearic region during the period 2017-2019.

Well done for a well deseved recognition! The whole GEDAi is very proud of your success !

New Publication on European Storm Petrel : foraging areas revealed for the first time !

Rotger, A., Sola, A., Tavecchia, G. and Sanz-Aguilar, A. 2020. Foraging Far from Home: Gps-Tracking of Mediterranean Storm-Petrels Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis Reveals Long-Distance Foraging Movements. Ardeola, 68(1):3-16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.13157/arla.68.1.2021.ra1

Abstract: Identifying important foraging areas is fundamental to detecting the demographic drivers of a species and ultimately to plan conservation measures. For some species, such as small pelagic seabirds, foraging grounds are difficult to locate and remain largely unknown. We used miniaturised GPS devices (∼0.95g) to study foraging movements of Mediterranean Storm-petrels Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis during the incubation period. A total of 43 individuals at Benidorm colony (southwestern Mediterranean Sea) were tracked during a single foraging trip. We first assessed potential negative effects of the tracking devices.

We recorded 22 complete foraging trips and measured home-range, foraging areas and the degree of overlap among individuals. We used first passage time analyses (FPT) to differentiate foraging/resting from flying/travelling activities and to infer potential foraging areas. All tracked birds returned to the colony. On average, individual body weight slightly decreased after foraging trips, suggesting a small immediate negative effect of the device. Tracked birds had high breeding success (0.71). Foraging trips lasted between 1 and 4.5 days with the total distance travelled ranging between 303.14 and 1,726.53km. The visited areas covered the whole south-western part of the Mediterranean Sea. Tracked individuals shared more than 50% of their home-range areas. Foraging areas were located further from the colony than previously thought (from 240 to 469km away) on deep sea areas of the Alboran Sea and Cartagena Canyons. Further studies are needed to locate foraging grounds during other life-cycle periods and to evaluate repeatability yearly, in order to determine the important marine areas for the species.—Rotger, A., Sola, A., Tavecchia, G. & Sanz-Aguilar, A. (2021). Foraging far from home: GPS-tracking of Mediterranean Storm-petrels Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis reveals long-distance foraging movements. Ardeola, 68: 3-16.

A press note in Spanish here

Storm Petrel 3rd campaign!

The third Storm Petrel campaign in 2020 is ongoing. This will be the 27th year of monitoring at Benidorm Island. Congratulation to all who made this possible, especially to A Sanz-Aguilar who kept the study alive during the last 13 years. More we study them, more these little birds surprise us.

First Griffon vulture marked in the wild in Mallorca!

The GEDAi helped the marking of the first Griffon vulture in the wild. It was a young bird taken from its nest just before fledgling (weighting ~7kg!). The Griffon Vulture arrived in Mallorca island in 2008  as a consequence of a huge storm. Since 2012 it breeds in the island.The bird has been equipped with a GMS/GPS radio, sponsored by the Vulture Conservation Fundation, under the supervision of Dra A. Cortés-Avizanda.  Keep posted to see how and where it flies.

More here

Storm Petrels on the news !

The work by A Sanz-Aguilar and A. Rotger on the first tracks of Storm Petrels breeding in the Balearic Archipelago hit the news! here

 

Storm Petrel 2nd Campaign

The second Storm Petrel campaign in the Balearic archipelago has began. Birds are breeding late this year and expecially in this colony. Keep posted to know the foraging tracks!

New publication on Vultures and lead!

Arrondo, E., [..], Cortés-Avizanda, A., [...], Donázar, J.A. 2020. Dust and bullets: Stable isotopes and GPS tracking disentangle lead sources for a large avian scavenger. Enviornmental Pollution, in press https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.115022

Abstract: Lead intoxication is an important threat to human health and a large number of wildlife species. Animals are exposed to several sources of lead highlighting hunting ammunition and lead that is bioavailable in topsoil. Disentangling the role of each in lead exposure is an important conservation issue, particularly for species potentially affected by lead poisoning, such as vultures. The identification of lead sources in vultures and other species has been classically addressed by means of stable-isotope comparisons, but the extremely varied isotope signatures found in ammunition hinders this identification when it overlaps with topsoil signatures.

In addition, assumptions related to the exposure of individual vultures to lead sources have been made without knowledge of the actual feeding grounds exploited by the birds. Here, we combine lead concentration analysis in blood, novel stable isotope approaches to assign the origin of the lead and GPS tracking data to investigate the main foraging grounds of two Iberian griffon vulture populations (N = 58) whose foraging ranges differ in terms of topsoil lead concentration and intensity of big game hunting activity. We found that the lead signature in vultures was closer to topsoil than to ammunition, but this similarity decreased significantly in the area with higher big game hunting activity. In addition, attending to the individual home ranges of the tracked birds, models accounting for the intensity of hunting activity better explained the higher blood lead concentration in vultures than topsoil exposure. In spite of that, our finding also show that lead exposure from topsoil is more important than previously thought