Moving to safety from a landing helicopter.  Keith Springer cradles an Antipodean Albatross chick on Antipodes Island

Following the interviewing of shortlisted candidates last month for the position of Operations Manager, the Mouse-Free Marion Project is pleased to announce that Mr Keith Springer of New Zealand has been offered and has accepted the post to rid South Africa’s sub-Antarctic Marion Island of its predatory House Mice that have taken to attacking and killing surface-breeding albatrosses.

With a career that had its early days with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, Antarctica New Zealand and the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service, Keith has considerable experience in island rodent eradication operations and is one of the world leaders in the field.  He led the successful (and award-winning) operation to eradicate European Rabbits, Black Rats and House Mice from Australia’s Macquarie Island, was part of the South Georgia Heritage Trust’s Habitat Restoration Project team that successfully eradicated Brown Rats and House Mice from South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur)* and has served as an advisor on many other rodent-eradication projects.  These have included being Operational Advisor and Safety Officer to the successful “Million Dollar Mouse” eradication on Antipodes Island and Operations Planner for the Gough Island Restoration Programme that aims to eradicate that island’s mice from June to September this year.  He was also responsible for the development of draft Operational and Project Plans for the Mouse-Free Marion Project on behalf of the environmental NGO BirdLife South Africa, having visited the island for this purpose in 2018.

Keith writes to ACAP Latest News: “What motivates me to be involved in island pest eradication projects is the chance to contribute to shifting the ecological balance back to species native to the island.  Seabirds are a particular beneficiary of predator removal, and they face so many issues off-island that they really do not need the added pressure of being “chomped on” when back on home turf.  But vegetation, soil and invertebrates also improve with invasive predators removed, so there is no doubt that it is a whole-of-ecosystem response when predators are removed.  My core motivation therefore is to plan operations to enhance the likelihood of a successful eradication outcome.”  He also notes that albatrosses, including those at risk to Gough and Marion’s mice “already face so many threats at sea.  On some of the islands they breed on, they face existential threats from introduced predators as well, so the populations are getting squeezed from both land and sea.  Without actions to reduce fishing mortality and introduced predators on their breeding islands, we face the sad but very real possibility of a world without albatrosses.”

Keith is due to start with MFM in July, although for the first month he will also be involved with follow-up work on Australia’s Lord Howe Island where the Rodent Eradication Project  was carried out in 2019.  He will be based in New Zealand with regular trips to South Africa, and to Marion Island as well.

 ACAP’s Information Officer first met Keith Springer in the ACAP Secretariat offices in Hobart, Tasmania when he was in the early stages of executing the Macquarie Island Pest Eradication Project (MIPEP) for the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.  Their conversation included the issue of mice on Marion – some years before the first reports of attacks on albatrosses.  Subsequently, regular posts to ACAP Latest News allowed readers to follow the fortunes of the Macquarie Island eradication effort to its ultimate success. Now, quite some years later, Keith will be bringing the knowledge and skills he learnt on “Macca” and honed elsewhere to rid Marion of its “killer” mice.

A number of applications has been received for the position of MFM Communications Manager. These have been assessed, and interviews will be arranged once the Project Manager returns from Gough Island later this month.

With thanks to Keith Springer and Anton Wolfaardt, Project Manager, Mouse-Free Marion Project.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 03 June 2021

*A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Islas Georgias del Sur y Islas Sandwich del Sur) and the surrounding maritime areas.

Streaked Shearwater at sea

 Shiho Koyama (Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan) and colleagues have published in the journal of Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology on  foraging stress in Streaked Shearwaters Calonectris leucomelas rearing chicks

The paper’s abstract follows:

“To understand foraging strategies and behavioral flexibility in wild animals, it is important to evaluate the physiological costs imposed by foraging efforts and how these costs affect foraging and provisioning behavior. Oxidative stress is a possible physiological indicator associated with foraging behavior in wild seabirds, and may also affect their reproductive performance. However, no previous study has simultaneously recorded foraging behavior and the associated oxidative stress in wild seabirds. Using an integrative approach based on oxidative stress measurements and bio-logging techniques (i.e., the use of animal-borne sensors), we determined the relationships between foraging behavior and oxidative stress in chick-rearing streaked shearwaters Calonectris leucomelas in 2018 and 2019. To quantify their oxidative stress, we measured reactive oxygen metabolites (d-ROMs) and biological antioxidant potential (BAP) in their plasma. We found that the d-ROMs levels were positively related to the maximum distance from the colony and the number of takeoffs, especially in 2019 when shearwaters flew further to forage. In 2018, when they flew relatively short distances, the BAP levels were positively related to the levels of their physical activity (overall dynamic body acceleration; ODBA). We conclude that longer and less successful foraging may lead to increase oxidative stress, while successful foraging may mitigate the oxidative stress of foraging by providing dietary antioxidants. Our results highlight that the combined data from bio-logging and oxidative stress measurements aid in evaluating the underlying physiological costs of foraging behavior in wild animals.”

Reference:

Koyama S., Mizutani, Y. & Yoda, K. 2021.  Exhausted with foraging: foraging behavior is related to oxidative stress in chick-rearing seabirds.  Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpa.2021.110984.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 02 June 2021

Grey Petrel and downy chick on Macquarie Island, photograph by Richard Deakin

Julie McInnes (Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Battery Point, Tasmania, Australia) and colleagues have published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice on searching for the presence of burrowing petrels, including the Near Threatened and ACAP-listed Grey Petrel Procellaria cinerea, by DNA analyses of feathers and scats.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Species inventories and biodiversity assessments are critical to conservation. Yet cryptic species or recolonizing species can be challenging to detect. DNA metabarcoding provides an alternative tool to identify species that can be difficult to observe during field surveys. We test the efficacy of DNA analysis to identify burrowing petrel species in a rapidly changing landscape, on a remote sub-Antarctic island following pest eradication. Discarded feathers and scats provided high quality DNA for species identification, assisting in detection of new species arrivals and new breeding sites across Macquarie Island. We highlight how DNA metabarcoding informs species inventories and is a valuable tool to complement seabird field surveys.”

Reference:

McInnes, J.C., Bird, J.P., Deagle, B.E., Polanowski, A.M. & Shaw, J.F. 2021.  Using DNA metabarcoding to detect burrowing seabirds in a remote landscape.  Conservation Science and Practice  https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.439.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 01 June 2021

A fledgling Scopoli's Shearwater

Paolo Becciu (Animal Flight Laboratory, Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, University of Haifa, Israel) and colleagues have published open access in the journal Ethology on lack of chick recognition by Scopoli's Shearwaters Calonectris diomedea.

The paper’s abstract follows:

“Parent–offspring recognition (POR) is fundamental in colonial birds when the potential intermingling of chicks is higher due to the large number and proximity of nests. In species with isolated nests, where chick presence in the nest is strong contextual evidence of kinship, there might be circumstances when the parent might doubt the identity of the chick, but not enough to reject it. Olfactory-based recognition of conspecifics and nest sites in birds has gained strong evidence suggesting a potential role of olfaction in POR. Despite that, there are no studies testing it. We used Scopoli's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea) as model colonial single-brooded species with a developed olfactory sense, usually breeding in well-spaced nests with low probability of chicks mixing. We tested the parent's ability to selectively respond to their own chick as opposed to a simpler rule of feeding any chick found in the nest by means of chick-fostering experiments. We designed two cross-fostering experiments using chicks of different ages to test whether the ability of parents to recognize a related chick develops over time, possibly after acquiring an own distinctive odour. Finally, we also manipulated nests’ odour to disentangle the confounding effect of nest site recognition from POR when parents return at night. All experimental chicks were adopted by parents as the weight and bill growth of cross-fostered chicks did not differ significantly from the control group. We recorded a small difference in weight when foster chicks were inside an odour-manipulated nest; although we did not record weight loss in experimental chicks, only a steeper increase in weight was observed in control chicks. In conclusion, adoption in Scopoli's shearwater seems to follow the rule "if the young is in my nest, accept it" proposed by Beecher (1991) for species with spatially separated nests and low chick mobility.”

Reference:

Becciu, P., Campioni, L., Massa, B. & Dell'Omo, G. 2021.  Unconditional adoption rules out the need for parent-offspring recognition in a single-brooded colonial seabird.  Ethology doi.org/10.1111/eth.13167 doi.org/10.1111/eth.13167.

John Cooper, ACAP Information Officer, 31 May 2021