Where have all the forage fish gone? Response of rhinoceros auklets to an anomalously poor breeding season

The effectiveness of using seabirds as indicators of marine conditions is predicated on the idea that focal species are sensitive to changes in environmental parameters. Species with more behavioral plasticity may be less sensitive to and presumably buffered from a wider range of environmental conditions, thereby compensating for potential perturbations in the system. Rhinoceros Auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata) breeding populations in Washington State typically show little interannual variability in reproductive parameters, suggesting that they are relatively insensitive to the range of conditions that they typically experience. However, in 2016, we documented a highly anomalous breeding season for Rhinoceros Auklets on Protection Island (PI), WA, in the Salish Sea but not on Destruction Island, on the outer Washington coast. We continued our long-term breeding season monitoring at both breeding colonies in 2017, providing us with the opportunity to evaluate the population-level response to the 2016 season. On Protection Island, burrow occupancy (the proportion of burrows that were reproductively active) was the lowest recorded in 12 years of monitoring (58% vs. long-term mean of 72%). In contrast, hatching and fledging success were both comparable to the 12-year mean values, 85% and 78%, respectively. As in 2016, none of the three reproductive parameters differed from long-term mean values for the Destruction Island breeding population in 2017. In stark contrast to 2016, nestling provisioning, as measured by fish per bill load and bill load weight, on PI was comparable to long-term values. The lower burrow occupancy on PI suggests a population-level effect from the 2016 breeding failure and a concurrent adult mortality event. This depressed breeding effort may have been driven by elevated adult mortality the previous summer and/or birds deciding not to breed during the 2017 season

Seasonal and Interspecific Variation in Frugivory by a Mixed Resident-Migrant Overwintering Songbird Community

Many temperate passerine bird species switch from diets of mostly invertebrates in the spring and summer to diets that include fruit and seeds in the fall and winter. However, relatively few studies have quantified diet composition or the extent of seasonal shifts during the non-breeding period, particularly among species and across communities with both residents and migrants. We measured carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values in food items (fruits, C3 and C4seeds, and insects from various trophic levels and plant communities) and in multiple tissues (feathers and plasma/whole blood) from 11 species of songbirds wintering in the southeastern U.S. We combined these diet and tissue values with empirically derived discrimination factors and used concentration-dependent mixing models to quantify seasonal diet shifts. We also validated mixing model results with data from fecal samples. Diets in this bird community, as delineated N and C isotopic space, diverged in the fall and winter relative to the summer as consumption of fruits and seeds increased. Across this songbird community, estimated contributions of fruit to plasma/whole blood increased from 16.2 ± 7.5% in the fall (mean ± SD; range: 4–26%) to 21.7 ± 10.3% (range: 9–37%) in the winter, while contributions of seeds increased from 29.4 ± 2.6% (range: 28–32%) in the fall to 36.6 ± 4.8% (range: 32–42%) in the winter. Fecal data showed qualitatively similar trends to mixing models, but consistently estimated higher contributions of fruit. Our work indicates that fruits and seeds constitute substantial sources of sustenance for non-breeding songbirds, there is considerable separation of resource use among species in the fall and winter, and fecal estimates of contributions to songbird tissues should be interpreted cautiously

Evaluation Salish Sea marine bird Indicators with insights from recent research by professional and citizen scientists

Marine birds are often viewed as good ecological indicators because they are relatively well studied and time-series data are often available, our understanding of their population biology is often extremely high, some species are tightly linked to their prey resources and, as upper trophic predators, they offer an integrative view of the dynamics at lower levels of the food web. In 2014, at-sea abundance and trends of the rhinoceros auklet, pigeon guillemot, marbled murrelet and scoters were collectively selected by the Puget Sound Partnership as indicators of the health of the Puget Sound marine food web. Long-term trends for these species are mixed with some species exhibiting relatively stable populations (e.g., rhinoceros auklet) and others are decreasing (e.g., marbled murrelet). In the absence of additional information, it is difficult to identify population change drivers. Fortunately, ongoing research by U.S. and Canadian academic and governmental researchers and citizen scientists (e.g., COASST, Puget Sound Seabird Survey, and Guillemot Research Group) are providing new insights into both population distributions and changes in population abundance. Specifically, these efforts have: (1) identified hotspots of species distributions, (2) evaluated the role of contamination, plastics and disease on population health, (3) evaluated the relative influence of various marine factors on population distribution and abundance, and (4) provided critical measurements of bird vital rates, measurements that are key to understanding population changes

Spatio-temporal dynamics of Marbled Murrelet hotspots during nesting in nearshore waters along the Washington to California coast

The Marbled Murrelet, Brachyramphus marmoratus, is a federally listed alcid that forages in nearshore waters of the Pacific Northwest, and nests in adjacent older-forest conifers within 40-80 km of shore. To estimate abundance and distribution of murrelets, we conduct at-sea surveys from May to July each year, starting in 2000 and continuing to present. We record numbers of individuals sighted by using distance-based transects and compute annual estimates of density after adjusting for detectability. At-sea transects are subdivided into 5-km segments, and we summarized mean and variance of density at each segment in Puget Sound and along the coast from the Canadian border South to San Francisco Bay. We used a boosted regression tree analysis to investigate the contributions of marine and terrestrial attributes on murrelet abundance in each segment. We observed that terrestrial attributes, especially the amount and pattern of suitable nesting habitat in proximity to each segment, made the strongest contribution, but that marine attributes also helped explain variation in murrelet abundance. Hotspots of murrelet abundance therefore reflect not only suitable marine foraging habitat but proximity of suitable inland nesting habitat

The South Asian genome

Genetics of disease Microarrays Variant genotypes Population genetics Sequence alignment AllelesThe genetic sequence variation of people from the Indian subcontinent who comprise one-quarter of the world's population, is not well described. We carried out whole genome sequencing of 168 South Asians, along with whole-exome sequencing of 147 South Asians to provide deeper characterisation of coding regions. We identify 12,962,155 autosomal sequence variants, including 2,946,861 new SNPs and 312,738 novel indels. This catalogue of SNPs and indels amongst South Asians provides the first comprehensive map of genetic variation in this major human population, and reveals evidence for selective pressures on genes involved in skin biology, metabolism, infection and immunity. Our results will accelerate the search for the genetic variants underlying susceptibility to disorders such as type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease which are highly prevalent amongst South Asians.Whole genome sequencing to discover genetic variants underlying type-2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and related phenotypes amongst Indian Asians. Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust cBRC 2011-13 (JS Kooner [PI], JC Chambers)

Maximum likelihood analysis of systematic errors in interferometric observations of the cosmic microwave background

We investigate the impact of instrumental systematic errors in interferometric measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization power spectra. We simulate interferometric CMB observations to generate mock visibilities and estimate power spectra using the statistically optimal maximum likelihood technique. We define a quadratic error measure to determine allowable levels of systematic error that do not induce power spectrum errors beyond a given tolerance. As an example, in this study we focus on differential pointing errors. The effects of other systematics can be simulated by this pipeline in a straightforward manner. We find that, in order to accurately recover the underlying B-modes for r=0.01 at 28<l<384, Gaussian-distributed pointing errors must be controlled to 0.7^\circ rms for an interferometer with an antenna configuration similar to QUBIC, in agreement with analytical estimates. Only the statistical uncertainty for 28<l<88 would be changed at ~10% level. With the same instrumental configuration, we find the pointing errors would slightly bias the 2-\sigma upper limit of the tensor-to-scalar ratio r by ~10%. We also show that the impact of pointing errors on the TB and EB measurements is negligibly small.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJS. Includes improvements in clarity of presentation and Fig.4 added, in response to refere

CMB observations from the CBI and VSA: A comparison of coincident maps and parameter estimation methods

We present coincident observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the Very Small Array (VSA) and Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) telescopes. The consistency of the full datasets is tested in the map plane and the Fourier plane, prior to the usual compression of CMB data into flat bandpowers. Of the three mosaics observed by each group, two are found to be in excellent agreement. In the third mosaic, there is a 2 sigma discrepancy between the correlation of the data and the level expected from Monte Carlo simulations. This is shown to be consistent with increased phase calibration errors on VSA data during summer observations. We also consider the parameter estimation method of each group. The key difference is the use of the variance window function in place of the bandpower window function, an approximation used by the VSA group. A re-evaluation of the VSA parameter estimates, using bandpower windows, shows that the two methods yield consistent results.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures. Final version. Accepted for publication in MNRA

The Five Factor Model of personality and evaluation of drug consumption risk

The problem of evaluating an individual's risk of drug consumption and misuse is highly important. An online survey methodology was employed to collect data including Big Five personality traits (NEO-FFI-R), impulsivity (BIS-11), sensation seeking (ImpSS), and demographic information. The data set contained information on the consumption of 18 central nervous system psychoactive drugs. Correlation analysis demonstrated the existence of groups of drugs with strongly correlated consumption patterns. Three correlation pleiades were identified, named by the central drug in the pleiade: ecstasy, heroin, and benzodiazepines pleiades. An exhaustive search was performed to select the most effective subset of input features and data mining methods to classify users and non-users for each drug and pleiad. A number of classification methods were employed (decision tree, random forest, $k$-nearest neighbors, linear discriminant analysis, Gaussian mixture, probability density function estimation, logistic regression and na{\"i}ve Bayes) and the most effective classifier was selected for each drug. The quality of classification was surprisingly high with sensitivity and specificity (evaluated by leave-one-out cross-validation) being greater than 70\% for almost all classification tasks. The best results with sensitivity and specificity being greater than 75\% were achieved for cannabis, crack, ecstasy, legal highs, LSD, and volatile substance abuse (VSA).Comment: Significantly extended report with 67 pages, 27 tables, 21 figure

Some like it hot: using citizen science to identify marine bird hotspots in Puget Sound

Puget Sound, situated in the southern portion of the Salish Sea, supports approximately 172 marine bird species that face a multitude of threats, ranging from chronic oiling to entanglement in derelict fishing gear. As local population numbers shift due to both intrinsic and extrinsic forcing (e.g., on the breeding grounds), understanding the pattern of species\u27 use of habitats and locations across the Sound can inform conservation planning. Using data collected by the Puget Sound Seabird Survey (PSSS) - a citizen science program that collects information on the abundance and distribution of marine birds in the nearshore environment throughout Puget Sound - we developed and applied hotspot detection methods to 15 marine bird species that utilize the nearshore waters of the Sound. We found that species distributions ranged from ubiquitous/uniform (e.g., Glaucous-winged Gulls Larus glaucescens, Double-crested Cormorants Phalacrocorax auritus and Horned Grebes Podiceps auritus), to highly location specific (e.g., Pigeon Guillemots Cepphus columba, Harlequin Ducks Histrionicus histrionicus and White-winged Scoters Melanitta fusca). We identified three different types of hotspot behavior: “seasonal contraction” in density or occupancy location(s), “hotspots in abundance” but not occupancy, and “hotspots in both occupancy and abundance.” Hotspot locations were species-group specific, probably resulting from differences in nearshore depth profile among locations. These depth associations likely correspond to feeding behavior and availability of foraging habitat. Hotspot detection can be a useful tool for delineating priority areas for conservation and management. The tools developed in this study can be used to identify both hot and cold spots and, if seasonality is included, to determine if the hotspots are stable or seasonally intermittent