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Breeding success and chick provisioning in Wilson’s storm-petrels Oceanites oceanicus over seven years: frequent failures due to food shortage and entombment

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Abstract

We examined the natural variation in parameters of the breeding success of Wilson’s storm-petrels on King George Island, South Shetland Islands, during seven breeding seasons, and determined the relative influence of krill abundance and climatic conditions. Feeding frequencies, feeding rates and meal sizes varied between years, and feeding rates were correlated with data of the Antarctic krill Euphausia superba abundance in the Elephant Island region. The overall breeding success of breeding pairs was low, ranging from 0 to 34%. Snow storms and wind conditions depressed breeding success even in years of good food availability, and snow storms were the most important determinant of the breeding success over the seven seasons. Snow storms during the breeding season occurred during periods of prevailing easterly winds. In addition, the distribution of wind directions was found to strongly influence the krill availability to storm-petrels.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Hans-Ulrich Peter, Tim Schmoll and Vladimir Bessonov for their contributions to this work. Krill carbon biomass data obtained from the US AMLR Program were provided by Valerie Loeb of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Roger Hewitt of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center provided additional information. We received logistic support from the Alfred-Wegener Institute of Marine and Polar Research (Bremerhaven, Germany), the National Antarctic Institute of Argentina and Hapag Lloyd Seetouristik. We are grateful to Henri Weimerskirch, Barbara Wienecke and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on the manuscript. This study was partly funded by grants provided by the German Science Foundation DFG (Qu 148/1, Pe 454/1), Federal Ministry for Education and Research (DLR-IB: CHN 00/031), Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the State of Thuringia, Germany (Landesgraduiertenstipendium).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Ökologie, Polar and Bird Ecology Group, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Dornburgerstrasse 159, 07743, Jena, Germany

    Christina Büßer & Anja Kahles

  2. School of Biosciences, University of Cardiff, Main Building, Museum Avenue, PO Box 915, Cardiff, CF10 3TL, UK

    Petra Quillfeldt

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  1. Christina Büßer
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  2. Anja Kahles
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Correspondence to Petra Quillfeldt.

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Büßer, C., Kahles, A. & Quillfeldt, P. Breeding success and chick provisioning in Wilson’s storm-petrels Oceanites oceanicus over seven years: frequent failures due to food shortage and entombment. Polar Biol 27, 613–622 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-004-0627-z

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