Language:

Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016

PloS one, 2020-01, Vol.15 (1), p.e0226087-e0226087 [Peer Reviewed Journal]

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License. ;ISSN: 1932-6203 ;EISSN: 1932-6203 ;DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226087 ;PMID: 31940310

Full text available

Citations Cited by

Actions
1. Add to My Research
2. Remove from My Research
3. E-mail
4. Print
5. Permalink
6. Citation
7. EasyBib
8. EndNote
9. RefWorks
10. Delicious
11. Export RIS
12. Export BibTeX

Title:
Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016
Author: Piatt, John F ; Parrish, Julia K ; Renner, Heather M ; Schoen, Sarah K ; Jones, Timothy T ; Arimitsu, Mayumi L ; Kuletz, Kathy J ; Bodenstein, Barbara ; García-Reyes, Marisol ; Duerr, Rebecca S ; Corcoran, Robin M ; Kaler, Robb S A ; McChesney, Gerard J ; Golightly, Richard T ; Coletti, Heather A ; Suryan, Robert M ; Burgess, Hillary K ; Lindsey, Jackie ; Lindquist, Kirsten ; Warzybok, Peter M ; Jahncke, Jaime ; Roletto, Jan ; Sydeman, William J
Hyrenbach, David
Subjects: Animals ; Aquatic birds ; Biology and Life Sciences ; Birds ; Breeding ; Charadriiformes - physiology ; Climate ; Colonies ; Earth Sciences ; Ecology and Environmental Sciences ; Failure ; Fish ; Fishery sciences ; Fishing ; Forage ; Forages ; Geology ; Heat waves ; Hot Temperature ; Laboratories ; Mortality ; Offshore ; Pacific Ocean ; People and places ; Phytoplankton ; Reproduction ; Reproductive failure ; Seawater ; Species ; Starvation ; Water quality ; Wildlife conservation ; Zooplankton
Is Part Of: PloS one, 2020-01, Vol.15 (1), p.e0226087-e0226087
Description: About 62,000 dead or dying common murres (Uria aalge), the trophically dominant fish-eating seabird of the North Pacific, washed ashore between summer 2015 and spring 2016 on beaches from California to Alaska. Most birds were severely emaciated and, so far, no evidence for anything other than starvation was found to explain this mass mortality. Three-quarters of murres were found in the Gulf of Alaska and the remainder along the West Coast. Studies show that only a fraction of birds that die at sea typically wash ashore, and we estimate that total mortality approached 1 million birds. About two-thirds of murres killed were adults, a substantial blow to breeding populations. Additionally, 22 complete reproductive failures were observed at multiple colonies region-wide during (2015) and after (2016-2017) the mass mortality event. Die-offs and breeding failures occur sporadically in murres, but the magnitude, duration and spatial extent of this die-off, associated with multi-colony and multi-year reproductive failures, is unprecedented and astonishing. These events co-occurred with the most powerful marine heatwave on record that persisted through 2014-2016 and created an enormous volume of ocean water (the "Blob") from California to Alaska with temperatures that exceeded average by 2-3 standard deviations. Other studies indicate that this prolonged heatwave reduced phytoplankton biomass and restructured zooplankton communities in favor of lower-calorie species, while it simultaneously increased metabolically driven food demands of ectothermic forage fish. In response, forage fish quality and quantity diminished. Similarly, large ectothermic groundfish were thought to have increased their demand for forage fish, resulting in greater top-predator demands for diminished forage fish resources. We hypothesize that these bottom-up and top-down forces created an "ectothermic vise" on forage species leading to their system-wide scarcity and resulting in mass mortality of murres and many other fish, bird and mammal species in the region during 2014-2017.
Publisher: United States: Public Library of Science
Language: English
Identifier: ISSN: 1932-6203
EISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226087
PMID: 31940310
Source: GFMER Free Medical Journals
MEDLINE
PubMed Central
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
ProQuest Central
DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals

Back to results list


INSPIRE LIBRARY - TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY	(84-028) 37 755 057	Feedback
19 Nguyen Huu Tho St. Dist.7, HCM	thuvien@tdtu.edu.vn	Feedback

Extreme mortality and reproductive failure of common murres resulting from the northeast Pacific marine heatwave of 2014-2016

Searching Remote Databases, Please Wait