Meeting Abstract

S6-1.4  Sunday, Jan. 6  Mechanistic links between climate variability, stress, and population processes in seabirds KITAYSKY, AS; University of Alaska Fairbanks askitaysky@alaska.edu

Climate change is likely to affect food web dynamics in marine ecosystems and thus availability of food to breeding seabirds. Consequences of food shortages for population dynamics of long-lived seabirds are not well understood. I will present the results of our long-term studies of the effects of climate variability on plankton- and fish-eating seabirds breeding in the continental shelf regions of sub-Arctic. I will also discuss our recent advances in studying the consequences of nutritional stress for the quality, sexual maturation, and senescence of individuals, which contribute to the greater goal of understanding how populations of upper-trophic-level predators breeding in the North Pacific may respond to climate warming.