Richard A. Phillips

British Antarctic Survey | BAS · Ecosystems Programme

The Southern Ocean, which flows around the Antarctic continent, is home to vast numbers of unique and remarkable animals, including penguins, albatrosses, petrels, seals, and whales. The ocean bursts into life every spring, fueling a summer feeding and breeding frenzy. During the dark winter months, there is little food and life is very harsh. Huma...

Many seabird populations are declining, with fisheries bycatch as one of the greatest threats. Explicit risk criteria should be used to identify whether bycatch is a problem for particular species and fisheries, but these are often poorly defined. A variety of methods are used to determine the risk that a specific fishery is having an unsustainable...

Plastic pollution is distributed patchily around the world’s oceans. Likewise, marine organisms that are vulnerable to plastic ingestion or entanglement have uneven distributions. Understanding where wildlife encounters plastic is crucial for targeting research and mitigation. Oceanic seabirds, particularly petrels, frequently ingest plastic, are h...

Seabirds often spend time on the water in the vicinity of their breeding colonies at the start or end of foraging trips, which may be for bathing, social interaction, information transfer, or to reduce predation risk for small petrels that prefer to return to land in darkness. Although such behaviour (hereafter rafting) is common, there are few dat...

Knowledge of lampreys during their marine phase is limited, and for the southern hemisphere species was gleaned from their predators (albatrosses) in the 1970s. Taking advantage of new methodologies and long-term data on predator diet and distributions, we infer diverse aspects of lamprey distribution and ecology. DNA analyses indicated that albatr...

Climate change affects timing of reproduction in many bird species, but few studies have investigated its influence on annual reproductive output. Here, we assess changes in the annual production of young by female breeders in 201 populations of 104 bird species (N = 745,962 clutches) covering all continents between 1970 and 2019. Overall, average...

Animal tracking has afforded insights into patterns of space use in numerous species and thereby informed area-based conservation planning. A crucial consideration when estimating spatial distributions from tracking data is whether the sample of tracked animals is representative of the wider population. However, it may also be important to track an...

Seabirds are among the most threatened of all vertebrate groups. Here we review their conservation status and key aspects of the main threats and some emerging threats. Bycatch in fisheries and overfishing are pervasive, but potentially soluble with improved governance. Invasive alien species at breeding sites remain a major threat despite notable...

For decades, studies have highlighted links between wind patterns and the behavior, ecology, distribution, energetics and life history of seabirds. However, only relatively recently have advancements in tracking technologies and improvements in the resolution of globally-available wind data allowed wind impacts on seabirds to be quantified across m...

Bycatch is a conservation concern for marine biodiversity, including seabirds. Analyses of spatio-temporal overlap are an important tool for identifying areas and periods where birds are most at risk, but until recently were only possible at coarse scales using aggregated data on fishing effort. Here, we integrated data from loggers that record GPS...

The increasing number of offshore wind farms (OWFs) proposed off the Brazilian coast is a biodiversity management challenge that needs to be addressed with strategic and targeted environmental impact assessments. The effects of OWFs on birds are much better studied in the northern than southern hemisphere. Knowledge of species distributions is key...

Foraging niche specialisation is thought to occur when different members of speciose communities divide resources in either time or space. Here we compared habitat preferences of the congeneric Grey Petrel Procellaria cinerea and White‐chinned Petrel P. aequinoctialis, tracked in the same calendar year using GPS loggers from Gough Island and Bird I...

Mercury is a pervasive environmental contaminant that can negatively impact seabirds. Here, we measure total mercury (THg) concentrations in red blood cells (RBCs) from breeding brown skuas (Stercorarius antarcticus) (n = 49) at Esperanza/Hope Bay, Antarctic Peninsula. The aims of this study were to: (i) analyse RBCs THg concentrations in relation...

Penguins lost the ability to fly more than 60 million years ago, subsequently evolving a hyper-specialized marine body plan. Within the framework of a genome-scale, fossil-inclusive phylogeny, we identify key geological events that shaped penguin diversification and genomic signatures consistent with widespread refugia/recolonization during major c...

Timing of breeding, an important driver of fitness in many populations, is widely studied in the context of global change, yet despite considerable efforts to identify environmental drivers of seabird nesting phenology, for most populations we lack evidence of strong drivers. Here we adopt an alternative approach, examining the degree to which diff...

Even in areas as remote as the Southern Ocean, marine organisms are exposed to contaminants that arrive through long-range atmospheric transport, such as mercury (Hg), a highly toxic metal. In previous studies in the Southern Ocean, inter-specific differences in Hg contamination in seabirds was generally related to their distribution and trophic po...

Few studies have assessed the influence of data quality on the predicted probability of occurrence and preferred habitat of marine predators. We compared results from four species distribution models (SDMs) for four southern-hemisphere albatross species, Buller’s (Thalassarche bulleri), Campbell (T. impavida), grey-headed (T. chrysostoma), and whit...

Optimal selection of foraging habitats is key to survival, but it remains unclear how naïve individuals are able to locate patchily‐distributed resources and maximize energy gain in completely new environments. In most animals, juveniles disperse unaccompanied by their parents, and hence their movements are likely guided, at least at fine scales, b...

Birds exhibit wide variation in their use of aquatic environments, on a spectrum from entirely terrestrial, through amphibious, to highly aquatic. Although there are limited empirical data on hearing sensitivity of birds underwater, mounting evidence indicates that diving birds detect and respond to sound underwater, suggesting that some modificati...

Monitoring of population sizes and trends using conventional surveys is challenging for nocturnal, burrow-nesting seabirds. The White-chinned Petrel is the most commonly killed species in Southern Ocean fisheries and its breeding success at many sites is reduced because of predation by invasive cats and rodents. As adaptive management of such threa...

Antarctic sea ice is a critical component of the climate system affecting a range of physical and biogeochemical feedbacks and supporting unique ecosystems. During the last glacial stage, Antarctic sea ice was more extensive than today, but uncertainties in geological (marine sediments), glaciological (ice core), and climate model reconstructions o...

Aim Understanding how natural populations respond to climatic shifts is a fundamental goal of biological research in a fast‐changing world. The Southern Ocean represents a fascinating system for assessing large‐scale climate‐driven biological change, as it contains extremely isolated island groups within a predominantly westerly, circumpolar wind a...

Morphological variation in biological structures may be driven by genetic and environmental factors, such as inter-and intraspecific competition for resources. In seabirds, although the bill is also involved in vocalization, olfaction, sexual selection and defence, the main drivers of high morphological plasticity in bill size and shape appear to r...

Advances in biologging techniques and the availability of high‐resolution fisheries data have improved our ability to understand the interactions between seabirds and fisheries and to evaluate mortality risk due to bycatch. However, it remains unclear whether movement patterns and behaviour differ between birds foraging naturally or scavenging behi...

Reproduction, and parental care in particular, are among the most energy-demanding activities within the annual cycle of adult birds. Parents that cannot meet the metabolic demands and other physiological costs of raising offspring may opt to abandon chicks in favour of self-maintenance and future reproduction. Recent work examining reproductive tr...

Antarctic marine ecosystems are often considered to be pristine environments, yet wildlife in the polar regions may still be exposed to high levels of environmental contaminants. Here, we measured total mercury (THg) concentrations in blood samples from adult brown skuas Stercorarius antarcticus lonnbergi (n = 82) from three breeding colonies south...

Until the last decade, gentoo penguins were usually split into two subspecies, northern gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua papua) breeding in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and other subantarctic islands and southern gentoo penguins (P. papua ellsworthi) breeding in the South Sandwich, South Orkney and South Shetland islands, and Antarctic Pen...

Foraging site selection and site fidelity can have implications for many ecological processes. The degree of site fidelity differs greatly not just between species but also within populations. Some of this variation may be explained by a win-stay–lose-shift (WSLS) strategy, where an individual returns to its most recent foraging area only if the pr...

Seabirds are amongst the most mobile of all animal species and spend large amounts of their lives at sea. They cross vast areas of ocean that appear superficially featureless, and our understanding of the mechanisms that they use for navigation remains incomplete, especially in terms of available cues. In particular, several large-scale navigationa...

Every year, billions of birds undertake extensive migrations between breeding and non-breeding areas, facing challenges that require behavioural adjustments, particularly to flight timing and duration. Such adjustments in daily activity patterns and the influence of extrinsic factors (e.g., environmental conditions, moonlight) have received much mo...

Antarctic sea ice is a critical component of the climate system, affecting a range of physical and biogeochemical feedbacks, and supporting unique ecosystems. During the last glacial stage, Antarctic sea ice was more extensive than today, but uncertainties in geological (marine sediments), glaciological (ice core), and climate model reconstructions...

Identifying important sites for biodiversity is vital for conservation and management. However, there is a lack of accessible, easily applied tools that enable practitioners to delineate important sites for highly mobile species using established criteria. We introduce the R package ‘track2KBA’, a tool to identify important sites at the population...

Seabird mortality in fisheries is a global problem and a major driver of the continued decline of many seabird populations. Unless appropriate mitigation is in place, longline fishing can cause high levels of seabird mortality. Here we describe the development and implementation of seabird mitigation measures in the Patagonian toothfish Dissostichu...

Fisheries bycatch is a major threat to marine megafauna such as seabirds. Population monitoring has revealed low survival of juvenile seabirds over recent decades, potentially because naïve individuals are more susceptible to bycatch than adults. However, major gaps remain in our knowledge of behavior and interaction of juveniles with fisheries. He...

• The use of miniaturized electronic tracking devices has illuminated our understanding of seabird distributions and habitat use, and how anthropogenic threats interact with seabirds in both space and time. To determine the year-round distribution of adult Campbell albatross (Thalassarche impavida), a single-island endemic, breeding only at Campbel...

Ocean circulation connects geographically distinct ecosystems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales via exchanges of physical and biogeochemical properties. Remote oceanographic processes can be especially important for ecosystems in the Southern Ocean, where the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) transports properties across ocean ba...

The conservation of migratory marine species, including pelagic seabirds, is challenging because their movements span vast distances frequently beyond national jurisdictions. Here, we aim to identify important aggregations of seabirds in the North Atlantic to inform ongoing regional conservation efforts. Using tracking, phenology, and population da...

Southern Ocean ecosystems are globally important. Processes in the Antarctic atmosphere, cryosphere, and the Southern Ocean directly influence global atmospheric and oceanic systems. Southern Ocean biogeochemistry has also been shown to have global importance. In contrast, ocean ecological processes are often seen as largely separate from the rest...

Species breeding at high latitudes face a significant challenge of surviving the winter. Such conditions are particularly severe for diurnal marine endotherms such as seabirds. A critical question is therefore what behavioural strategies such species adopt to maximise survival probability. We tested 3 hypotheses: (1) they migrate to lower latitudes...

1. Many seabirds dive to forage, and the ability to use this hunting technique varies according to such factors as morphology, physiology, prey availability, and ambient light levels. Proficient divers are more able to seize sinking baits deployed by longline fishing vessels and may return them to the surface, increasing exposure of other species....

Migratory marine species cross political borders and enter the high seas, where the lack of an effective global management framework for biodiversity leaves them vulnerable to threats. Here, we combine 10,108 tracks from 5775 individual birds at 87 sites with data on breeding population sizes to estimate the relative year-round importance of nation...

Diving is an ecologically important behaviour that provides air-breathing predators with opportunities to capture prey, but that also increases their exposure to incidental mortality (bycatch) in commercial fisheries. In this study, we characterised the diving behaviour of 26 individuals of three species, the black-browed albatross Thalassarche mel...

Background Inertial measurement units (IMUs) with high-resolution sensors such as accelerometers are now used extensively to study fine-scale behavior in a wide range of marine and terrestrial animals. Robust and practical methods are required for the computationally-demanding analysis of the resulting large datasets, particularly for automating cl...

Northern Macronectes halli and southern giant petrels M. giganteus are opportunistic predators and the dominant avian scavengers in sub-Antarctic and Antarctic ecosystems. At South Georgia, there are globally important breeding populations of both species; however, no detailed diet study has been carried out at this site for > 35 years. Here, we an...

Climate change, fisheries and invasive species represent three pervasive threats to seabirds, globally. Understanding the relative influence and compounding nature of marine and terrestrial threats on the demography of seabird communities is vital for evidence-based conservation. Using 20 years of capture-mark-recapture data from four sympatric spe...

The wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans, is a globally threatened species breeding at a number of sites within the Southern Ocean. Across the South Georgia archipelago, there are differences in population trends even at closely located colonies. Between 1999 and 2018 the largest colony, at Bird Island, declined at 3.01% per annum, while in the Ba...

Research into the patterns and drivers of juvenile migration is important for understanding the development of individual migration strategies. Although several recent studies have tracked adult large gulls throughout the annual cycle, the movements of juveniles remain poorly understood. We fitted Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that transm...

Mercury (Hg) is an environmental contaminant which, at high concentrations, can negatively influence avian physiology and demography. Albatrosses (Diomedeidae) have higher Hg burdens than all other avian families. Here, we measure total Hg (THg) concentrations of body feathers from adult grey-headed albatrosses ( Thalassarche chrysostoma ) at South...

The massive number of seabirds (penguins and procellariiformes) and marine mammals (cetaceans and pinnipeds) – referred to here as top predators – is one of the most iconic components of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. They play an important role as highly mobile consumers, structuring and connecting pelagic marine food webs and are widely studie...

As temperatures rise, timing of reproduction is changing at different rates across trophic levels, potentially resulting in asynchrony between consumers and their resources. The match–mismatch hypothesis (MMH) suggests that trophic asynchrony will have negative impacts on average productivity of consumers. It is also thought to lead to selection on...

Young birds in cold environments face a range of age-specific thermal challenges. Studying the thermal biology of young birds throughout ontogeny may further our understanding of how such challenges are met. We investigated how age and environmental parameters influenced surface temperature gradients across various body regions of wandering albatro...

Long-term studies of pelagic nekton in the Southern ocean and their responses to ongoing environmental change are rare. Using stable isotope ratios measured in squid beaks recovered from diet samples of wandering albatrosses Diomedea exulans, we assessed decadal variation (from 1976 to 2016) in the habitat (δ 13C) and trophic level (δ 15N) of five...

The non‐breeding period is critical for restoration of body condition and self‐maintenance in albatrosses, yet detailed information on diet and distribution during this stage of the annual cycle is lacking for many species. Here, we use stable isotope values of body feathers (δ13C, δ15N) to infer habitat use and trophic level of non‐breeding adult...

Aim Determining the drivers of movement of different life‐history stages is crucial for understanding age‐related changes in survival rates and, for marine top predators, the link between fisheries overlap and incidental mortality (bycatch), which is driving population declines in many taxa. Here, we combine individual tracking data and a movement...

Fisheries bycatch is one of the biggest threats to seabird populations. Managers need to identify where and when bycatch occurs and ensure effective action. In 1999, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released the International Plan of Action for Reducing Incidental Catch of Seabirds in Longline Fisheries (IPOA-s) encouragi...

Bycatch of seabirds in longline fisheries includes mortalities and live captures (mainly during hauling). Excluding outliers, the latter accounts for 5–70% (mean 40.4%) of all bycaught birds in demersal, and 3–23% (mean 10.7%) in pelagic longline fisheries. The proportion that later die from injuries is unknown, and this cryptic mortality complicat...

In a highly dynamic airspace, flying animals are predicted to adjust foraging behaviour to variable wind conditions to minimize movement costs. Sexual size dimorphism is widespread in wild animal populations, and for large soaring birds which rely on favourable winds for energy‐efficient flight, differences in morphology, wing loading and associate...

Invasive species present a major conservation threat globally and nowhere are their affects more pronounced than in island ecosystems. Determining how native island populations respond demographically to invasive species can provide information to mitigate the negative effects of invasive species. Using 20 years of mark-recapture data from three sy...

Aim Marine protected areas can serve to regulate harvesting and conserve biodiversity. Within large multi‐use MPAs, it is often unclear to what degree critical sites of biodiversity are afforded protection against commercial activities. Addressing this issue is a prerequisite if we are to appropriately assess sites against conservation targets. We...

Southern Ocean ecosystems are under pressure from resource exploitation and climate change1,2. Mitigation requires the identification and protection of Areas of Ecological Significance (AESs), which have so far not been determined at the ocean-basin scale. Here, using assemblage-level tracking of marine predators, we identify AESs for this globally...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

Although there is a consensus about the evolutionary drivers of animal migration, considerable work is necessary to identify the mechanisms that underlie the great variety of strategies observed in nature. The study of differential migration offers unique opportunities to identify such mechanisms and allows comparisons of the costs and benefits of...