Oil pollution and climate have wide-scale impacts on seabird demographics

Stephen C. Votier*, Ben J. Hatchwell, Andrew Beckerman, Robin H. McCleery, Fiona M. Hunter, Jayne Pellatt, Mark N. Trinder, Tim R. Birkhead

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

156 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Oil spills often spell disaster for marine birds caught in slicks. However, the impact of oil pollution on seabird population parameters is poorly known because oil spills usually occur in wintering areas remote from breeding colonies where birds may be distributed over a wide area, and because it is difficult to separate the effects of oil pollution from the effect of natural environmental variation on seabird populations. Using a long-term data set we show that over-winter survival of adult common guillemots (Uria aalge) is negatively affected by both the incidence of four major oil-spills in their wintering grounds and high values of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. After controlling for the effect of the NAO index, we show that winter mortality of adult guillemots is doubled by major oil pollution incidents. Our results demonstrate that oil pollution can have wide-scale impacts on marine ecosystems that can be quantified using populations of marked individuals to estimate survival.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1157-1164
Number of pages8
JournalEcology Letters
Volume8
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2005

Keywords

  • North Atlantic Oscillation
  • Oil pollution
  • Population dynamics
  • Programme MARK
  • Survival
  • Uria aalge

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Oil pollution and climate have wide-scale impacts on seabird demographics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this