Uria lomvia: BirdLife International

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2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esteban Góngora ◽  
Kyle H. Elliott ◽  
Lyle Whyte

AbstractThe role of the gut microbiome is increasingly being recognized by health scientists and veterinarians, yet its role in wild animals remains understudied. Variations in the gut microbiome could be the result of differential diets among individuals, such as variation between sexes, across seasons, or across reproductive stages. We evaluated the hypothesis that diet alters the avian gut microbiome using stable isotope analysis (SIA) and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We present the first description of the thick-billed murre (Uria lomvia) fecal microbiome. The murre microbiome was dominated by bacteria from the genus Catellicoccus, ubiquitous in the guts of many seabirds. Microbiome variation was explained by murre diet in terms of proportion of littoral carbon, trophic position, and sulfur isotopes, especially for the classes Actinobacteria, Bacilli, Bacteroidia, Clostridia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. We also observed differences in the abundance of bacterial genera such as Catellicoccus and Cetobacterium between sexes and reproductive stages. These results are in accordance with behavioural observations of changes in diet between sexes and across the reproductive season. We concluded that the observed variation in the gut microbiome may be caused by individual prey specialization and may also be reinforced by sexual and reproductive stage differences in diet.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Gaston ◽  
J. Mark Hipfner
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1997 ◽  
Vol 200 (12) ◽  
pp. 1757-1763 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Hawkins ◽  
P Butler ◽  
A Woakes ◽  
G Gabrielsen

The rate of oxygen consumption (O2), respiratory quotient (RQ) and deep body temperature (TB) were recorded during a single, voluntary ingestion of Arctic cod Boreogadus saida (mean mass 18.9+/-1.1 g, s.e.m., N=13) by five postabsorptive Brunnich's guillemots (thick-billed murre, Uria lomvia). The birds were resting in air within their thermoneutral zone, and the fish were refrigerated to 0-2 degreesC. The rate of oxygen consumption increased by a factor of 1.4 during the first few minutes after ingestion, but there was no significant change in TB. Mean rate of oxygen consumption returned to preingestive levels 85 min after the birds ate the fish. The telemetered temperature of one fish reached TB within 20 min. This suggests that the persistent elevation in O2 over the next hour corresponded to the obligatory component of the heat increment of feeding (HIF) and was not related to heating the fish. Abdominal temperature increases after diving bouts in free-ranging common guillemots (common murre, Uria aalge) are possibly achieved through the HIF, since meals are processed at sea. Of the increase in O2 measured in the laboratory, it is calculated that 30 % is required to heat the fish, while 70 % is due to the HIF. In free-ranging birds, the excess heat provided by the HIF could contribute 6 % of the daily energy expenditure. This suggests that the HIF augments heat production in Uria spp. and thus reduces the energetic cost of thermoregulation.


The Auk ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Mark Hipfner ◽  
Anthony J. Gaston

Abstract In many avian species, reproductive success increases with parental age and experience, and declines seasonally. However, it is difficult to evaluate how parental attributes affect reproduction independently of date effects, because young, inexperienced pairs generally lay later than older, experienced pairs. We examined how parental experience and timing affected nestling growth in the Thick-billed Murre (Uria lomvia), an Arctic seabird that lays a single-egg clutch, by taking advantage of a natural contrast made possible by marked within-group synchrony. That is a common feature at murre colonies, and enabled us to monitor the breeding performance of experienced pairs over an extended period that overlapped with breeding by inexperienced pairs late in the season. Whereas growth of offspring raised by experienced parents was unaffected by their hatching date, offspring raised by inexperienced parents grew more slowly than those raised concurrently by experienced parents. Therefore, parental experience influenced nestling growth rates whereas timing did not, a result that accords with previous studies on this species. Absence of direct effects of timing of egg-laying on breeding success of Thick-billed Murres stands in sharp contrast to many other avian species, and seems surprising for an Arctic-nesting species often assumed to be strictly time-constrained in its breeding.


2020 ◽  
Vol 181-182 ◽  
pp. 104879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Will ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Thiebot ◽  
Hon S. Ip ◽  
Punguk Shoogukwruk ◽  
Morgan Annogiyuk ◽  
...  
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