WEST Senior Biologist Melinda Conners on our offshore team is lead author on the recently published research article, Dynamic soaring decouples dynamic body acceleration and energetics in albatross, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. This paper describes flight costs of two species of dynamic soaring birds: black-browed and grey-headed #albatrosses from the Southern Ocean.
Dr. Conners and her coauthors found that traditional energetic metrics don’t work when birds are soaring, and that novel rotational metrics can be useful to understand the nuances of energetics in dynamic soaring birds. And, while soaring energetic costs were low relative to flapping as one might imagine, they were measurable and accumulated across long foraging trips.
“This is the first time we have measured instantaneous costs of rotation in soaring seabirds and it is a demonstration of the usefulness of novel metrics derived from additional sensors. Understanding the nuances of flight energetics is crucial for forecasting impacts of changing environments on albatross and other seabirds.” – Melinda Conners
Please reach out to Melinda at [email protected] for a copy of the PDF or if you have questions/comments about the research.
Click the link to read the article: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.247431
