Physiological response mechanisms underlying breeding phenology, breeding performance, and foraging activity of Canadian seabirds.

To migratory birds, carryover effects are the experiences that individuals have during the non-breeding period of their annual cycle, which can greatly influence life-history traits like breeding decision, the timing of breeding, and future breeding probability. But in order to understand these processes more fully, electronic tracking (i.e. telemetry) and physiological sampling techniques are both needed in order to define how migration experiences link physiologically to the traits most closely linked to fitness. Although there are many researchers who are currently studying carryover effects in birds, very few are examining the underlying physiological mechanisms that drive variation in behaviour, timing, and success, especially with respect to breeding performance. Also, because it is becoming increasingly recognized that the traits contributing most to lifetime fitness in birds are related to a female's decision about when to breed, and the extent to which she invests in reproduction, the work that I am proposing here will focus on the female perspective and document individual physiological variation surrounding fitness-related traits. The long-term objective of this 5-year Discovery research program will do this using multiple seabird model systems, to obtain data that will establish the physiological and environmental factors underlying avian migration behaviour, carry-over effects, and costs of reproduction. Seabirds are excellent models for this work, as they make decisions each year about whether to breed, and so environmental conditions play an important role. They are also highly fidelitous to specific nesting locations, and so the probability of recapturing individuals for studies across the annual cycle is very high. These traits make them excellent models for physiological studies of life history variation, and for telemetry device recovery But the results of this work will inform our knowledge of life-history variation in birds more broadly. Additionally, this work will also provide important information about the movement ecology and survival of Leach's storm petrels, an important sentinel seabird species breeding in eastern Canada and which is sensitive to variation in ocean climate, but which is about to be listed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. This research program will be based at Dalhousie University, and will engage researchers at several other Canadian universities and government agencies, and will directly support the training and of at least three graduate students, and several undergraduate researchers, thus contributing to the training of highly qualified personnel. A long-term goal is to understand (and hopefully predict!) the responses of migratory birds to climate change.