Ruth E Dunn

Lancaster University | LU · Lancaster Environment Centre

For free-ranging animals, field metabolic rate (FMR) is the sum of their energy expenditure over a specified period. This quantity is a key component of ecological processes at every biological level. We applied a phylogenetically informed meta-analytical approach to identify the large-scale determinants of FMR in seabirds during the breeding seaso...

Information on seabird foraging behaviour outside the breeding season is currently limited. This knowledge gap is critical as this period is energetically demanding due to post‐fledging parental care, feather moult and changing environmental conditions. Based on species’ body size, post‐fledging parental strategy and primary moult schedule we teste...

During their annual cycles, animals face a series of energetic challenges as they prioritise different life history events by engaging in temporally and potentially spatially segregated reproductive and non-breeding periods. investigating behaviour and energy use across these periods is fundamental to understanding how animals survive the changing...

Prey depletion may contribute to marine predator declines, yet the forage base required to sustain an unfished population of predatory fish at carrying capacity is unknown. We integrated demographic and physiological data within a Bayesian bioenergetic model to estimate annual consumption of a grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) population...

The ability of individual animals to balance their energy budgets throughout the annual cycle is important for their survival, reproduction and population dynamics. However, the annual cycles of many wild, mobile animals are difficult to observe and our understanding of how individuals balance their energy budgets throughout the year therefore rema...

Bio-logging has revealed much about high-latitude seabird migratory strategies, but tropical species are comparatively understudied. Here we use geolocators to study the year-round movement behaviour of adult red-footed boobies ( Sula sula rubripes ) from the Chagos Archipelago, tropical Indian Ocean. Light levels suggest that red-footed boobies ar...

Researchers from diverse disciplines, including organismal and cellular physiology, sports science, human nutrition, evolution and ecology, have sought to understand the causes and consequences of the surprising variation in metabolic rate found among and within individual animals of the same species. Research in this area has been hampered by diff...

The non‐breeding season presents significant energetic challenges to birds that breed in temperate or polar regions, with clear implications for population dynamics. In seabirds, the environmental conditions at non‐breeding sites drive food availability and the energetic cost of regulatory processes, resulting in variation in diet, behaviour and en...

Over the past 30 years, global location sensing (GLS) loggers have been deployed across a diverse range of seabird species all around the globe. GLS loggers, also termed geolocators, record ambient light from which latitude and longitude can be derived, providing estimates of seabird foraging areas and migratory routes. Between 2002 and 2020, GLS l...

Migration is a widespread strategy for escaping unfavourable conditions during winter, but the extent to which populations that segregate during the breeding season aggregate during the non-breeding season is poorly understood. Low non-breeding season aggregation may be associated with higher likelihood of overlap with threats, but with fewer popul...

Aim Understanding patterns in the abundance of species across thermal ranges can give useful insights into the potential impacts of climate change. The abundant‐centre hypothesis suggests that species will reach peak abundance at the centre of their thermal range where conditions are optimal, but evidence in support of this hypothesis is mixed and...

Citizen scientists play an important role in generating extensive data sets on marine environments and their associated flora and fauna. However, errors resulting from misidentification and over/underestimation of abundances may reduce the accuracy of these data sets and consequently, perceptions regarding data validity are one of the greatest chal...

S1. Seabird species selection process; Figure S2. FMR values and jackknife estimates; Table S3. Model outputs.

Capturing Our Coast leads on from the success of the Big Sea Survey, a citizen science project piloted in the North-East UK. Volunteers are given standardised training and ongoing support in order to return robust data on rocky shore ecosystems across the UK. Replicable protocols allow data to be collected on sets of species chosen specifically to...