Telomere length is a strong predictor of foraging behavior in a long-lived seabird

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Rebecca C. Young
  • Alexander S. Kitaysky
  • Chris P. Barger
  • Ine Dorresteijn
  • Motohiro Ito
  • Yutaka Watanuki

Telomeres are an increasingly studied component of physiological ecology. However, in longlived birds a large telomere loss with chronological age is not the norm. Telomeres are now regarded less as a chronological aging tool and more as an indicator of individual quality, residual lifespan, or biological age. If telomeres indicate biological aging processes, then they should also be associated with other variables that change with age, especially foraging and reproductive behaviors. This study compared telomere length to a suite of foraging parameters in Thick-billed Murres breeding on three colonies in the Bering Sea. Telomere length, environmental conditions at colonies, and sex played pivotal roles in determining foraging habitat selection. Spatial habitat use, foraging efficiency, and prey selection variables all changed with telomere length. The behavioral evidence indicates that despite losing telomeres, birds with short telomere length retain their ability to use the environment efficiently. This indicates that aging birds remain behaviorally flexible, despite paying physiological costs. Changes in spatial use were largely sex-dependent: females and males differed in their use of the environment as telomere lengths declined. Prey selection was related to telomere length and colony; changes in murre trophic level depended on telomere length, but their direction also depended on habitat quality. We found much support for the continued able functioning of birds with shorter telomeres, indicating that physiological aging does not carry only costs. Murres appear to modify their behavior depending on environmental conditions as their physiological reserves decline.

Original languageEnglish
Article number39
JournalEcosphere
Volume6
Issue number3
Number of pages26
ISSN2150-8925
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.03.2015

Bibliographical note

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Funding number: 13J06234

    Research areas

  • Brunnich's guillemot, Data logger, Diving behavior, Foraging ecology, Pribilof islands, Seabird, Telomeres, Temperature-depth recorder, Thick-billed murre, Uria lomvia
  • Ecosystems Research

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Changes in the Work Situation and Attitudes in East-germany After the Introduction of Capitalism
  2. Progress and challenge for magnesium alloys as biomaterials
  3. A Decision Support System for Crew Rostering in Public Transit
  4. Entangled Identities
  5. Mindfulness as self-confirmation? An exploratory intervention study on potentials and limitations of mindfulness-based interventions in the context of environmental and sustainability education
  6. Explorations in social spaces
  7. Transgressive Use of Technology
  8. A switching model predictive control for overcoming a hysteresis effect in a hybrid actuator for camless internal combustion engines
  9. Putting inquiry-based learning into practice
  10. Organizing for innovation through accelerators: An introduction
  11. Sustainability in Business: Integrated Management of Value Creation and Disvalue Mitigation
  12. Pathways towards sustainable and just futures with and for disabled populations
  13. Who wants to take an intelligence test? Personality and achievement motivation in the context of ability testing
  14. Diversity and specificity of host-natural enemy interactions in an urban-rural interface
  15. CSR communication on corporate websites compared across continents
  16. A new and benign hegemon on the horizon?
  17. High temperature deformation mechanisms and processing map for hot working of cast-homogenized Mg-3Sn-2Ca alloy
  18. Impact of prescribed burning on the nutrient balance of heathlands with particular reference to nitrogen and phosphorus
  19. Incremental analysis of springback and kinematic hardening by the variation of tension during deep drawing
  20. Advancing Decision-Visualization Environments—Empirically informed Design Recommendations
  21. A single PD plus gravity compensation control for global asymptotic regulation of robot manipulators with actuator constraints
  22. Augmented space
  23. Symmetry in Spatial Perspective Tasks
  24. Credit Constraints, Foreign Ownership, and Foreign Takeovers in Germany
  25. Notting Hill Gate 3 Basic
  26. Precipitation Kinetics of AA6082: An Experimental and Numerical Investigation
  27. Implementation intentions and the willful pursuit of prosocial goals in negotiations
  28. Developing European conservation and mitigation tools for pollination services: approaches of the STEP (Status and Trends of European Pollinators) project
  29. Insights into the accuracy of social scientists’ forecasts of societal change
  30. Self-regulated learning and self assessment in online mathematics bridging courses
  31. Glen Mills Schools
  32. Implications of Material Flow Cost Accounting for Life Cycle Engineering
  33. Unpacking the Personal Initiative-Performance Relationship
  34. EEG 2014
  35. Sustainability Science with Ozzy Osbourne, Julia Roberts and Ai Weiwei
  36. Local nutrient addition drives plant diversity losses but not biotic homogenization in global grasslands