scholarly journals Nest relief in the cryptically-incubating semipalmated sandpiper is quick but vocal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Bulla ◽  
Christina Muck ◽  
Daniela Tritscher ◽  
Bart Kempenaers

Biparental care requires coordination between parents. Such coordination might prove difficult if opportunities to communicate are scarce, which might have led to the evolution of elaborate and noisy nest relief rituals in species facing a low risk of predation. However, whether such conspicuous rituals also evolved in species that avoid predation by relying on crypsis remains unclear. Here, we used a continuous monitoring system to describe nest relief behavior during incubation in an Arctic-breeding shorebird with passive nest defense, the semipalmated sandpiper (Calidris pusilla). We then explored whether nest relief behavior provides information about parental cooperation and predicts incubation effort. We found that incubating parents vocalized twice as much before the arrival of their partner than during other times of incubation. In 75% of nest reliefs, the incubating parent left the nest only after its partner had returned and initiated the nest relief. In these cases, exchanges were quick (25s, median) and shortened over the incubation period by 0.1 – 1.4s per day (95%CI), suggesting that parents became more synchronized. However, nest reliefs were not cryptic. In 90% of nest reliefs, at least one parent vocalized, and in 20% of nest reliefs, the incubating parent left the nest only after its returning partner called instantaneously. In 30% of cases, the returning parent initiated the nest relief with a call; in 39% of these cases, the incubating partner replied. If the partner replied, the next off-nest bout was 1 – 4hr (95%CI) longer than when the partner did not reply, which corresponds to an 8 – 45% increase. Our results indicate that incubating semipalmated sandpipers, which rely on crypsis to avoid nest predation, have quick but acoustically conspicuous nest reliefs. Our results also suggest that vocalizations during nest reliefs may be important for the division of parental duties.

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmem E. Fedrizzi ◽  
Severino M. de Azevedo Júnior ◽  
Maria E. Lacerda de Larrazábal

Annually, large flocks of semipalmated sandpiper Calidris pusilla (Linnaeus, 1766) winter along South America coast, between September-April. They store fats in order to moult and return to their breeding grounds. Here, was examined body masses and plumage of adults Semipalmated Sandpipers during the departure month to evaluate the relationship between body mass and plumage. Fieldwork was conducted at Coroa do Avião (7º40'S, 34º50'W), Pernambuco. Birds were trapped in mist-nets between April 1990 and 1997. They were weighed, and aged according to plumage. Adult plumage may be (1) non-breeding, (2) pre-breeding, and (3) breeding. A total of 213 birds were weighed and examined, so that 8.0% (17) presented non-breeding plumage, 54.0% (115) pre-breeding, and 38.0% (81) breeding plumage. As in Semipalmated Sandpiper, 25g is the minimum body mass required to migrate, birds with breeding plumage and most with pre-breeding, were potentially apt to migrate. Non-breeding plumage birds presented smaller body mass. Apparently physiological problems and infestation may be important factors to explain over-summering, i.e., individuals remaining in the wintering grounds during the boreal summer.


2012 ◽  
Vol 90 (9) ◽  
pp. 1181-1190 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.T. Quinn ◽  
D.J. Hamilton

Semipalmated Sandpipers ( Calidris pusilla (L., 1766)) use the upper Bay of Fundy, Canada, as a critical stopover site during their annual fall migration to wintering grounds in South America. While in the area, they feed extensively on mudflat invertebrates. Historically the amphipod Corophium volutator (Pallas, 1766) has been thought to make up the majority of their diet. However, we have recently observed flexibility in foraging behaviour and prey selection by sandpipers. The extent of this flexibility and the current diet composition is unknown. To address these knowledge gaps, we assessed Semipalmated Sandpiper diets using stable isotope analyses of blood plasma and available prey items. Data were collected in two arms of the Bay of Fundy during summer 2009 and 2010. Diets fluctuated between years and sites, but in all cases the diet was much more diverse than previously thought. Polychaetes and biofilm made substantial contributions, and C. volutator was still present in the diet, but at much reduced levels than previously noted. This previously unrecognized inclusion of biofilm in the diet is consistent with recent observations of other calidrid shorebirds. Based on measures of prey availability, there is little evidence of preference for C. volutator.


1983 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1133-1137 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. L. Gratto ◽  
F. Cooke ◽  
R. I. G. Morrison

Approximately 100 pairs of Semipalmated Sandpipers (Calidris pusilla) nested in a 2-km2 area at La Pérouse Bay, Manitoba, each year from 1980 to 1982. The proportion of nesting yearlings in the population varied from 3 to 10% in different years. Some aspects of the breeding biology of pairs containing at least one yearling were compared with those without yearlings. In 1980, a significantly lower proportion of nests of yearlings were successful (hatched at least one chick) compared with older pairs. In 1981 and 1982 no difference was observed. Nest failure was primarily caused by egg predation. No differences in clutch size or nest distribution were found between the two age groups, but eggs were significantly smaller in nests of yearling females and mean hatch date at yearling nests was later.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Hope ◽  
David B. Lank ◽  
Paul A. Smith ◽  
Julie Paquet ◽  
Ronald C. Ydenberg

ABSTRACTPeregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) have undergone a steady hemisphere-wide recovery since the ban on DDT in 1973, resulting in an ongoing increase in the level of danger posed for migrant birds, such as Arctic-breeding sandpipers. We anticipate that in response migrant semipalmated sandpipers (Calidris pusilla) have adjusted migratory behaviour, including a shift in stopover site usage towards locations offering greater safety from falcon predation.We assessed semipalmated sandpiper stopover usage within the Atlantic Canada Shorebird Survey dataset. Based on 3,030 surveys (totalling ∼32M birds) made during southward migration, 1974 - 2017, at 198 stopover locations, we assessed the spatial distribution of site usage in each year (with a ‘priority matching distribution’ index, PMD) in relation to the size (intertidal area) and safety (proportion of a site’s intertidal area further than 150m of the shoreline) of each location. The PMD index value is > 1 when usage is concentrated at dangerous locations, 1.0 when usage matches location size, and < 1 when usage is concentrated at safer locations.A large majority of migrants were found at the safest sites in all years, however our analysis of the PMD demonstrated that the fraction using safer sites increased over time. In 1974, 80% of birds were found at the safest 20% of the sites, while in 2017, this had increased to 97%. A sensitivity analysis shows that the shift was made specifically towards safer (and not just larger) sites. The shift as measured by a PMD index decline cannot be accounted for by possible biases inherent in the data set. We conclude that the data support the prediction that increasing predator danger has induced a shift by southbound migrant semipalmated sandpipers to safer sites.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hicklin ◽  
Cheri L. Gratto-Trevor

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Donelson ◽  
Wayne M. Zavis ◽  
S. K. (John) Punwani ◽  
Monique Ferguson Stewart ◽  
Mark C. Edwards

Abstract Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Wilcoxon Research have developed a real-time on-board condition monitoring system for freight trains. The Office of Research and Development of the Federal Railroad Administration funded the development of the system. The system monitors bearings, wheels, trucks and brakes on freight trains in order to detect equipment defects and derailments. The objectives of the system are to improve railroad safety and operation efficiency through continuous monitoring of mechanical components on freight trains.


2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 45-48
Author(s):  
李树珉 Li Shumin ◽  
刘斌 Liu Bin ◽  
孙长库 Sun Changku ◽  
赵玉梅 Zhao Yumei

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (17) ◽  
pp. 3758
Author(s):  
Hsing-Cheng Yu ◽  
Ming-Yang Tsai ◽  
Yuan-Chih Tsai ◽  
Jhih-Jyun You ◽  
Chun-Lin Cheng ◽  
...  

Recently, environmental pollution resulting from industrial waste has been emerging in an endless stream. The industrial waste contains chemical materials, heavy metal ions, and other toxic materials. Once the industrial waste is discharged without standards, it might lead to water or environmental pollution. Hence, it has become more important to provide evidence-based water quality monitoring. The use of a multifunctional miniaturized water quality monitoring system (WQMS), that contains continuous monitoring, water quality monitoring, and wireless communication applications, simultaneously, is infrequent. Thus, electrodes integrated with polydimethylsiloxane flow channels were presented in this study to be a compound sensor, and the sensor can be adopted concurrently to measure temperature, pH, electrical conductivity, and copper ion concentration, whose sensitivities are determined as 0.0193 °C/mV, −0.0642 pH/mV, 1.1008 mS/V·cm (from 0 mS/cm to 2 mS/cm) and 1.1975 mS/V·cm (from 2 mS/cm to 5.07 mS/cm), and 0.0111 ppm/mV, respectively. A LoRa shield connected into the system could provide support as a node of long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) for wireless communication application. As mentioned above, the sensors, LoRa, and circuit have been integrated in this study to a continuous monitoring system, WQMS. The advantages of the multifunctional miniaturized WQMS are low cost, small size, easy maintenance, continuous sampling and long-term monitoring for many days. Every tested period is 180 min, and the measured rate is 5 times per 20 min. The feedback signals of the miniaturized WQMS and measured values of the instrument were obtained to compare the difference. In the measured results at three different place-to-place locations the errors of electrical conductivity are 0.051 mS/cm, 0.106 mS/cm, and 0.092 mS/cm, respectively. The errors of pH are 0.68, 0.87, and 0.56, respectively. The errors of temperature are 0.311 °C, 0.252 °C, and 0.304 °C, respectively. The errors of copper ion concentration are 0.051 ppm, 0.058 ppm, 0.050 ppm, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khushboo Qayyum ◽  
Idrees Zaman ◽  
Anna Förster

Abstract In oceans, fish usually live in an environment that is best suited for their growth. When these fish are introduced into man-made environment, e.g. in mariculture and aquaculture set-ups, the physical parameters might stray from their ideal values, resulting in improper growth and undesired outcomes. Hence, to prevent these undesirable outcomes, continuous monitoring of the physical parameters of the water such as pH, temperature and dissolved oxygen is required. In this work, we present a system called H2O sense, which continuously monitors the physical parameters of the water in tanks and alerts the user in case the values deviate from ideal. We use only low-power, low-cost hardware and open-source development tools, which makes the system easily applicable to various settings. The deployment of our system in the Maritime Laboratory of the University of Namibia shows its efficacy. Furthermore, we evaluate in detail the performance of our system and discuss its applicability in similar challenged environments.


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