Living on the edge – Lesser black-backed gulls foraging and breeding at a coastal-urban interface

Lesser black-backed gulls once successfully adapted to anthropogenic environments, indicating a high degree of behavioural plasticity. They are also considered to be generalist feeders with a wide ecological niche. But most individuals do not exploit the complete range of habitats and resources that are available, they rather specialize. However, the adaptive significance of such specialization likely depends on the predictability of the environment, which at current becomes increasingly unreliable - among others due to human-induced environmental changes.The PhD project aims at investigating how reproductive decisions vary with the ability of an individual to respond to environmental and anthropogenic changes, and how the costs and benefits of individual specialisation relate to trade-offs throughout the annual cycle (including migration, nest-site selection and reproduction). This will be studied in field experiments via large scale behavioural observations of individually marked (colour-ringed) birds in collaboration with the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). This will be combined with the implementation of state-of-the-art GPS tracking devices that collect detailed information about individual movements and behaviour 24h/24h via the high tech sensor network (LifeWatch Infrastructure) in collaboration with Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ).

Keywords:ECOLOGICAL URBANISM, CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, ANIMAL ECOLOGY

Disciplines:Animal biology, Ecology, Environmental science and management, Other environmental sciences