GAP Personnel:

Cory Williams
Ph.D. Student
Institute of Marine Science
Email: fnctw@uaf.edu

Short Biography: I received a B.Sc. (Honors) in Biology from Simon Fraser University in 1999 and have worked on a variety of ornithological research projects, including studies of waterfowl, shorebirds, owls, grebes, and seabirds. My general research interests include avian ecology and conservation, physiological ecology, population biology and demography, and near shore marine systems. I am particularly interested in studies that focus on population processes and ecosystem functioning that will provide managers with scientific advice to conserve and protect wildlife and habitat.

Title of thesis: Effects of prey availability on the diet, reproductive success, time-budgets, and foraging distribution of Tufted Puffins in the Western Gulf of Alaska.

Summary of Current Research: Puffins are prime candidates for ecological monitoring in the Gulf of Alaska because of the information they can provide on vital forage species and early life stages of several species of commercial importance. I will use funding and logistical support provided by the ongoing GAP research program to monitor the reproductive success, time-budgets, foraging patterns, and diets of Tufted Puffins in the Kodiak region. Numerous studies have demonstrated that seabird diet composition is a sensitive indicator of prey availability, providing valuable information on the spatial, temporal, and/or age distributions of prey species that are difficult to assess using conventional fisheries techniques. Unfortunately, dietary analyses based on stomach content analysis and/or collections of prey fed to chicks at colonies, unless sampled regularly over an extended period, reflect short term diet and are biased by the rapid digestion of soft-bodied prey and the retention of hard parts. This study will determine puffin diets using quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA), a relatively new technique that infers a predator's diet based on the fatty acid composition of potential prey species. QFASA provides an integration of diet over a longer period and avoids the inherent biases associated with stomach content analysis. I will use QFASA to investigate seasonal and inter-annual differences in the diets of adult puffins and to determine if prey fed to nestlings accurately reflects prey consumed by breeding adults during the chick-rearing period.
Additionally, this study will use radio telemetry and timed Temperature-Depth Recorders (TDRs) to determine how seasonal and inter-annual differences in the abundance and distribution of prey affects foraging distribution and activity budgets of Tufted Puffins. Reproductive success is an easily measured and commonly used parameter to determine overall productivity levels, but it is potentially buffered by the ability of breeding birds to alter foraging effort in response to changes in prey availability. Consequently, relatively small changes in reproductive parameters, such as breeding success and chick growth rates, may be accompanied by radical changes in the time-budgets and foraging patterns of breeding seabirds.

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