GEDA at school !

In the Balearic Archipelago, the Yellow legged gulls commonly visit schools to clean the patio from the leftovers of their mid-morning snack. This cleaning service can be an opportunity for the children to familiarize with a species adapted to exploit remains produced by human activities. The GEDA in collaboration with the CEIP Son Oliva and OCEAN NIGHT began a didactical project where gulls become teachers. 

 

Through their ecology and movements, students will learn the marine ecosystem and the role of seabirds as bridge between ocean and land.

 

We have first introduced the species (left) and ask student to count how many gulls visit the school each day.

We than equipped two of these gulls with a GSM/GPS transmitter  and follow their activity through an online platform (below).  In June, once the gull breeding period ends, we will meet the student again and discuss what gull taught us about their life and the ocean.

New Publication on Synchrony !

Payo-Payo, A., Igual,J.-M., Sanz-Aguilar, A., Real, E., Genovart, M., Oro, D., Tavecchia, G., 2022 Interspecific synchrony on breeding performance and the role of anthropogenic food subsidies. PLoS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275569 

Abstract. Synchrony can have important consequences for long-term metapopulations persistence, community dynamics and ecosystems functioning. While the causes and consequences of intra-specific synchrony on population size and demographic rates have received considerable attention only a few factors that may affect inter-specific synchrony have been described. We formulate the hypothesis that food subsidies can buffer the influence of environmental stochasticity on community dynamics, disrupting and masking originally synchronized systems.

 To illustrate this hypothesis, we assessed the consequences of European policies implementation affecting subsidy availability on the temporal synchrony of egg volume as a proxy of breeding investment in two sympatric marine top predators with differential subsidy use. We show how 7-year synchrony appears on egg volume fluctuations after subsidy cessation suggesting that food subsidies could disrupt interspecific synchrony. Moreover, cross correlation increased after subsidy cessation and environmental buffering seems to act during synchronization period. We emphasize that subsidies dynamics and waste management provide novel insights on the emergence of synchrony in natural populations.