2025/04/22 by Jake W. Kroepel, Noelle L. Koliadko, Tae-Hee Lee +4 · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Avian ecology and behavior #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies #Animal Behavior and Reproduction
paper · doi:10.1080/15594491.2025.2481764
High sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Pacific Northwest of North America are associated with food shortages for non-diving seabirds, leading to reproductive failures and population declines. Previously, we showed that a large Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) colony in Washington State, USA, experienced increased egg cannibalism in years of high SST, as well as every-other-day clutch initiation synchrony (that is, synchronized laying of first eggs), which served as an adaptive response to cannibalism. Here, we focused on nests from that study in which the first egg was cannibalized before the second egg was laid (n = 150 nests). We used chi-square analyses, Kaplan-Meier survival profiles, and logistic regression to investigate whether the arrivals of the second eggs in these (empty) nests played the same role as clutch initiations. Although synchronization of the laying of such second eggs did not appear to be adaptive, our results remain consistent with the evidence that egg-laying synchrony constitutes an adaptive response to egg cannibalism, a finding of interest in the context of rising global SSTs.