Predicting Gull/Human Conflicts with Mathematical Models: A Tool for Management

Gulls are highly adaptable animals that thrive in proximity to humans. Although gulls enjoy legal protection in North America, England, and Europe, they often conflict with human interests by spreading disease, transporting contaminants, fouling public areas with droppings, and colliding with aircraft. Of particular concern are aggregates of loafing gulls that gather on parking lots, rooftops, and airport runways. Loafing in birds is a general state of immobility that involves behaviors such as sleeping, sitting, standing, resting, preening, and defecating. The ability to predict the incidence of aggregated loafing provides a first step toward the amelioration of bird/human conflicts. We used mathematical models to predict the aggregate loafing behavior of gulls as a function of environmental conditions and tested model portability across years, phase of breeding cycle, loafing location, and species. Because groups of loafing birds quickly reassemble after disturbance, algebraic models for the steady-state dynamics can be obtained from the differential equations using time-scale analysis. The accessible management tool requires data collection on an appropriate time scale and information-theoretic model selection from a suite of alternative algebraic models. ©2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc