Foraging and movement ecology of three storm-petrel species in the northern Humboldt Current System

• Applicant: Professorin Petra Quillfeldt, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions ; Oceanography
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 560372567

Storm-petrels are among the world’s most abundant pelagic seabirds, and thus form an important part of marine ecosystems. However, due to their small size and pelagic lifestyle, their trophic ecology is hard to study, especially during the non-breeding period which they spend on the open ocean. Only recently, breeding sites for three storm-petrel species (Markham’s storm-petrel Hydrobates markhami, Ringed storm-petrel Hydrobates hornbyi and Elliot’s storm-petrel Oceanites gracilis) have been found in the Atacama Desert, although they have been described as abundant in waters off northern Chile and Peru. However, their trophic ecology and distribution have so far remained unstudied. In this project, we plan to implement methods already proven successful in other petrel species. Using baseline-independent SIA, GPS and GLS tags, metabarcoding of diet contents and morphological and breeding parameter data collected during the breeding season, we aim to further unravel the foraging and movement ecology of the three species. We intend to use baseline-independent SIA to study the trophic position of the species both during and outside of the breeding period, to investigate ecological segregation among the species. We will equip adults with GPS tags during the breeding season to discover foraging ranges during the breeding period, and with GLS tags to study the non-breeding movements and exposure to light pollution. We aim to test how differences in trophic positions between the species are connected to differences in distribution of the birds and their prey, how the foraging ecology changes among breeding seasons, and how it compares to the non-breeding season. As much of this information is still unknown, this study will set a baseline for future analyses of behavioral variability and provide information on risks such as light attraction.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants