Teresa Militão

University of Barcelona | UB · Department of Animal Biology

Correct species identification is a crucial issue in systematics with key implications for prioritising conservation effort. However, it can be particularly challenging in recently diverged species due to their strong similarity and relatedness. In such cases, species identification requires multiple and integrative approaches. In this study we use...

Aim: Intraspecific variability in the migratory movements of seabirds is being revealed far more complex than hitherto recognized, and our lack of understanding undermines their effective protection. Our aim is to test whether the isotopic values of a single feather of two threatened seabirds, the Mediterranean (Puffinus yelkouan) and the Balearic...

Determining migratory strategies of seabirds is still a major challenge due to their relative inaccessibility. Small geolocators are improving this knowledge, but not all birds can be tracked. Stable isotope ratios in feathers can help us to understand migration, but we still have insufficient baseline knowledge for linking feather signatures to mo...

Plastic debris is often ingested by marine predators and can cause health disorders and even death. We present the first assessment of plastic ingestion in Mediterranean seabirds. We quantified and measured plastics accumulated in the stomach of 171 birds from 9 species accidentally caught by longliners in the western Mediterranean from 2003 to 201...

The energetic demands of animals change throughout their annual life cycle. In migrating birds, reproduction and migration are the two most energy demanding processes; the transition from one to the other require a number of physiological adjustments. When arriving to the breeding grounds, long-distance migratory birds need to recover from migratio...

Seabirds spend most of the year offshore, out of human sight, covering great distances while migrating and foraging for food often in remote areas of the high seas. Several small seabirds that anthropogenic activities might threaten have hitherto remained untracked. One such species is the anti-tropical White-faced Storm-petrel Pelagodroma marina....

Sex-specific foraging behaviour may lead to differences between the sexes in both resource acquisition and exposure to threats and thereby contribute to sex-specific reproductive roles or mortality. As such, it is important to identify in which species sex-specific foraging behaviour occurs. We deployed GPS devices to incubating common terns (Stern...

Background State-space models, such as Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), are increasingly used to classify animal tracks into behavioural states. Typically, step length and turning angles of successive locations are used to infer where and when an animal is resting, foraging, or travelling. However, the accuracy of behavioural classifications is seldom...

Conservation of breeding seabirds typically requires detailed data on where they feed at sea. Ecological niche models (ENMs) can fill data gaps, but rarely perform well when transferred to new regions. Alternatively, the foraging radius approach simply encircles the sea surrounding a breeding seabird colony (a foraging circle), but overestimates fo...

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...

Predator-prey interactions provide key information on the role of each species in the community and an overall assessment of the stability of food webs. DNA metabarcoding has the potential to provide highly informative data which substantially enhance trophic interactions analysis, by providing higher taxonomic detail compared to earlier methods. H...

Overfishing has been drastically changing food webs in marine ecosystems, and it is pivotal to quantify these changes at the ecosystem level. This is especially important for ecosystems with a high diversity of top predators such as the Eastern Atlantic marine region. In this work we used high-throughput sequencing methods to describe the diet of t...

Phenological divergence between conspecific populations breeding sympatrically is increasingly recognized as an important evolutionary process that may lead to allochronic speciation. However, the extent to which adaptation to differences in the timing of breeding may contribute to this process remains unclear. In this study, we assessed breeding p...

Aim Over the last decades, the study of movement through tracking data has grown exceeding the expectations of movement ecologists. This has posed new challenges, specifically when using individual tracking data to infer higher‐level distributions (e.g. population and species). Sources of variability such as individual site fidelity (ISF), environm...

Seabirds breeding at tropical latitudes suffer an increased pressure to forage efficiently, because oligotrophic waters have less abundant and more patchily distributed prey. In related species living in sympatry, trophic or spatial niche partitioning may emerge as a strategy to mitigate increased competition. However, studies using molecular metho...

Climate change has repeatedly been shown to impact the demography and survival of marine top predators. However, most evidence comes from single populations of widely distributed species, limited mainly to polar and subpolar environments. Here, we aimed to evaluate the influence of environmental conditions on the survival of a tropical and migrator...

Determining the non‐breeding distribution and activity patterns of migratory animals is essential to understand the trade‐offs across breeding, moulting and migratory periods and to evaluate the differential levels of exposure of these animals to threats throughout the year. By taking advantage of the current miniaturisation of geolocators, during...

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...

Seabirds, particularly Procellariiformes, are highly mobile organisms with a great capacity for long dispersal, though simultaneously showing high philopatry, two conflicting life-history traits that may lead to contrasted patterns of genetic population structure. Landmasses were suggested to explain differentiation patterns observed in seabirds, b...

In colonial seabirds, ecological divergence may occur in the absence of physical barriers, driven by the isolation of populations due to distance, or the adaptation to local environment. In migratory seabirds, the geographic segregation among breeding populations can persist year round (i.e., strong migratory connectivity) when populations breeding...

Light‐level geolocators are popular bio‐logging tools, with advantageous sizes, longevity and affordability. Biologists tracking seabirds often presume geolocator spatial accuracies between 186 and 202 km from previously innovative, yet taxonomically, spatially and computationally limited, studies. Using recently developed methods, we investigated...

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...

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...

Pelagic seabird populations have declined strongly worldwide. In the North Atlantic there was a huge reduction in seabird populations following the European colonization of the Azores, Madeira and Canary archipelagos but information on seabird status and distribution for the subtropical region of Cabo Verde is scarce, unavailable or dispersed in gr...

Despite its importance for ecology and conservation, we are still far from understanding how environmental variability interacts with intrinsic factors and individual specialization to determine trophic strategies of long-lived taxa, mostly due to difficulties in studying the same animals over extended periods. Here, by yearly consistently sampling...

Sexual segregation (SS) is widespread among animal taxa, with males and females segregated in distribution, behavior, or feeding ecology but so far, most studies on birds have focused on the breeding period. Outside this period, the relevance of segregation and the potential drivers of its persistence remain elusive, especially in the marine enviro...

Many generalist species are composed of individuals varying in the size of their realized niches within a population. To understand the underlying causes and implications of this phenomenon, repeated samplings on the same individuals subjected to different environmental conditions are needed. Here, we studied individual specialization of feeding st...

The breeding phenology and nest site distribution of Red-billed Tropicbirds (Phaethon aethereus) was monitored from 6 June 2014 to 18 May 2016 on Parc National des Iles de la Madeleine, Senegal. During this period, this study site was visited every 15 days to record active nests and their contents (eggs or chicks). We found up to 76 nest sites but...

Knowing the spatial scales at which effective management can be implemented is fundamental for conservation planning. This is especially important for mobile species, which can be exposed to threats across large areas, but the space use requirements of different species can vary to an extent that might render some management approaches inefficient....

Knowing the spatial scales at which effective management can be implemented is fundamental for conservation planning. This is especially important for mobile species, which can be exposed to threats across large areas, but the space use requirements of different species can vary to an extent that might render some management approaches inefficient....

Studying the movements of oceanic migrants has been elusive until the advent of several tracking devices, such as the light-level geolocators. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) offers a complementary approach to infer areas used year-round, but its suitability in oceanic environments remains almost unexplored. To evaluate SIA as a tool for inferring mo...

Total number of GLS loggers deployed and recovered by colony, and number of GLS loggers included in the present study. Only GLS loggers with data for the last non-breeding period before recovering were included in this study, in order to relate the non-breeding areas with the feathers moulted during the non-breeding period and sampled at GLS logger...

Biplots of δ15N and δ13C values for P1 (a), S8 (b) and R6 (c) feathers sampled from tracked individuals of Bulwer’s petrel. In each plot, we show isotopic values and Standard Bayesian Ellipses by non-breeding areas (depicted in triangles and discontinuous contours for birds wintering in the Central Atlantic, and in circles and continuous contours f...

Accepted values of the standard material used in the stable isotopic analysis performed in this study, mean measured (±standard deviation) in the samples of standards materials used, minimum and maximum values for all runs, and number of samples (n). (DOCX)

Boxplots of δ15N (a) and δ13C (b) values for the 1st (P1), 3rd (P3), 5th (P5), 7th (P7) and 10th (P10) primary feathers, the 1st (S1), 12th (S12) and 8th (S8) secondary feathers of Bulwer’s petrels found dead at each colony: Vila (in blue, n = 8), M. Clara (green, n = 8), Raso (orange, n = 9) and Cima (red, n = 4). The 6th rectrix (R6) of corpses a...

Isotopic data of corpses and tracked Bulwer’s petrels included in the article. (DOCX)

This book has been published by the Spanish Society of Ornithology (SEO/BirdLife) in the framework of the MIGRA programme. In this work we analyse the movement ecology and at-sea behaviour of two related seabird species under conservation concern: the Scopoli's and the Cory's Shearwater. It focuses on Spanish populations, covering the entire distri...

Despite the proliferation of seabird tracking studies, there is a relative paucity of studies on small tropical seabirds. We present for the first time the distribution and movements of the little-known Boyd’s shearwater Puffinus boydi, a Procellariiform endemic to the Cape Verde Islands. We tracked 28 birds from 2 breeding sites (Ilhéu Raso and Il...

Cape Verde petrel (Pterodroma feae) is currently considered near threatened, but little is known about its population size, breeding biology and on land threats, jeopardizing its management and conservation. To improve this situation, we captured, marked and recaptured (CMR) birds using mist-nets over 10 years; measured and sexed them; monitored up...

Description of molecular sexing methodology. (DOCX)

Description of POPAN Jolly Seber modelling and model selection. (DOCX)

Carbon and nitrogen values of standard material used stable isotopic analysis. Accepted and mean measured (±standard deviation) values of the standard material used in the stable isotopic analysis performed in this study, as well as, the mean minimum and maximum values obtain in each run. The "n" refers to the number of samples of standards materia...

Examples of Cape Verde petrels brood patches representative of the score used in this article: (A) score 0 –no brood patch (i.e., no evidence of defeathering); (B) score 1 –loss of some down feathers around the edges; (C) score 2 –fully developed brood patch, that in this species occurred when almost all the down feathers fall, but there is still a...

Breeding phenology of Cape Verde petrels obtained from the light and saltwater immersion data of geolocators. (DOCX)

Description of the stable isotope analysis of fur samples. (DOCX)

GPS positions of seven tracked domestic cats from Chã das Caldeiras. (XLSX)

GPS positions over land of tracked Cape Verde petrels breeding in Fogo island. (XLSX)

Conservation policies for the protection of marine biodiversity are being implemented in many international management treaties worldwide. The process of identification of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is often based on the spatial preference of threatened species, such as many marine predators. Multi-colony tracking studies comprising a wide geogr...

With increasing pressure on the oceans from environmental change, there has been a global call for improved protection of marine ecosystems through the implementation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Here, we used Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) of tracking data from 14 seabird species to identify key marine areas in the southwest Atlantic Oc...

Geolocators are revealing new aspects of seabird migratory dynamics, but its price and size and some constraints about bird recapture limit their use. Alternatively, stable isotope analysis (SIA) on feathers may allow inferring non-breeding distributions of seabirds, but its suitability in tropical and subtropical species remains unexplored. Here,...

Geolocators are revealing new aspects of the migratory dynamics of seabirds, but due to price, size, or limitations in recapturing birds, geolocators are not always feasible to use. In this regard, stable isotope analyses (SIA) on feathers have emerged as an alternative tool to infer their non-breeding areas. In the marine environment, the majority...

Research on sexual segregation is essential to understand the role of sexual differences on distribution, migration and reproduction over the annual cycle of migratory species. Sexual differences in seabird ecology have been often reported during the breeding period, yet little is known about sex effects out of that period. We evaluated the degree...

The conservation status and taxonomy of the three gadfly petrels that breed in Macaronesia is still discussed partly due to the scarce information on their spatial ecology. Using geolocator and capture-mark-recapture data, we examined phenology, natal philopatry and breeding-site fidelity, year-round distribution, habitat usage and at-sea activity...

Aim Our current understanding of migratory strategies and the reasons for their high variability along the phylogenetic tree remains relatively poor. Most of the hypotheses relating to migration have been formulated for terrestrial taxa; classically, oceanic migrations were considered as merely dispersive because of the scarcity of observations in...

The evolution of different life-history strategies has been suggested as a major force constraining physiological mechanisms such as immunity. In some long-lived oviparous species, a prolonged persistence of maternal antibodies in offspring could thus be expected in order to protect them over their long growth period. Here, using an intergeneration...

Seabird moult is poorly understood because most species undergo moult at sea during the non-breeding season. We scored moult of wings, tail and body feathers on 102 Mediterranean Cory's Shearwaters Calonectris diomedea diomedea accidentally caught by longliners throughout the year. Primary renewal was found to be simple and descendant from the most...