Accelerating animal energetics: High dive costs in a small seabird disrupt the dynamic body acceleration - energy expenditure relationship

Ste Marie, Eric; Grémillet, David; Fort, Jérôme; Patterson, Allison; Brisson-Curadeau, Émile; Clairbaux, Manon; Perret, Samuel; Speakman, John; Elliott, Kyle H.

Accelerating animal energetics: High dive costs in a small seabird disrupt the dynamic body acceleration - energy expenditure relationship

Files

jeb243252.pdf(1.53 MB)

Accepted Version

Date

2022-05-20

Authors

Ste Marie, Eric

Grémillet, David

Fort, Jérôme

Patterson, Allison

Brisson-Curadeau, Émile

Clairbaux, Manon

Perret, Samuel

Speakman, John

Elliott, Kyle H.

Publisher

The Company of Biologists

Published Version

10.1242/jeb.243252

Abstract

Accelerometry has been widely used to estimate energy expenditure in a broad array of terrestrial and aquatic species. However, a recent reappraisal of the method showed that relationships between dynamic body acceleration (DBA) and energy expenditure weaken as the proportion of non-mechanical costs increase. Aquatic air breathing species often exemplify this pattern, as buoyancy, thermoregulation and other physiological mechanisms disproportionately affect oxygen consumption during dives. Combining biologging with the doubly-labelled water method, we simultaneously recorded daily energy expenditure (DEE) and triaxial acceleration in one of the world's smallest wing-propelled breath-hold divers, the dovekie (Alle alle). These data were used to estimate the activity-specific costs of flying and diving and to test whether overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) is a reliable predictor of DEE in this abundant seabird. Average DEE for chick-rearing dovekies was 604±119 kJ/d across both sampling years. Despite recording lower stroke frequencies for diving than for flying (in line with allometric predictions for auks), dive costs were estimated to surpass flight costs in our sample of birds (flying: 7.24, diving: 9.37 X BMR). As expected, ODBA was not an effective predictor of DEE in this species. However, accelerometer-derived time budgets did accurately estimate DEE in dovekies. This work represents an empirical example of how the apparent energetic costs of buoyancy and thermoregulation limit the effectiveness of ODBA as the sole predictor of overall energy expenditure in small shallow-diving endotherms.

Keywords

Accelerometers , Arctic , Ecology , Metabolism

Citation

Ste Marie, E., Grémillet, D., Fort, J., Patterson, A., Brisson-Curadeau, É., Clairbaux, M., Perret, S., Speakman, J. and Elliott, K. H. (2022) 'Accelerating animal energetics: High dive costs in a small seabird disrupt the dynamic body acceleration - energy expenditure relationship', Journal of Experimental Biology. doi: 10.1242/jeb.243252