Foraging habitats of the seabird community of Europa Island (Mozambique Channel)

Occurrence Observation
Latest version published by OBIS-SEAMAP on Oct 7, 2025 OBIS-SEAMAP
Home:
https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/691
Publication date:
7 October 2025
Published by:
OBIS-SEAMAP
License:
CC-BY-NC 4.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 357 records in English (28 KB) - Update frequency: not planned
Metadata as an EML file download in English (17 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (13 KB)

Description

Original provider: Sebastien Jaquemet Dataset credits: Sebastien Jaquemet Abstract: We investigated the foraging habitats of the winter breeding community of tropical seabirds from Europa Island (Mozambique Channel) in September 2003. We focused our study on the dominant species of this austral community, the sooty tern (<i>Sterna fuscata</i>), the red-footed booby (<i>Sula sula</i>), and the frigatebirds, including the great (<i>Fregata minor</i>) and the lesser frigatebirds (<i>F. ariel</i>). We considered the at-sea distribution and abundance of these species in relation to chlorophyll concentration, sea surface temperatures, sea surface height anomalies, depth of the thermocline, distance to the colony, and presence of surface marine predators, flying fishes and other seabirds. Although the marine environment where seabirds foraged was oligotrophic, it presents the best feeding opportunities for seabirds for the area in winter.<br><br> Our study demonstrates that the winter-breeding seabird species of Europa Island tend to forage in productive waters in association with other marine predators when possible. Sooty terns and frigatebirds were widely distributed in the whole study area, whereas red-footed boobies were not found farther than 160 km from their colonies and were associated with relatively productive waters. Sooty terns and red-footed boobies were aggregated where flying fishes were abundant. The presence of other marine predators was associated with larger multispecies feeding flocks than when no association occurred. Sooty terns, which are numerically dominant at Europa and adopted network foraging, seem to be catalysts of feeding events, and represented a good target for the other foraging species, especially frigatebirds. However, when possible, frigatebirds favor association with flocks of red-footed boobies.

Data Records

The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 357 records.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Jaquemet, S. 2020. Foraging habitats of the seabird community of Europa Island (Mozambique Channel). Version 1.5.0. Dataset published in OBIS-SEAMAP. https://doi.org/10.82144/1f59cd45.

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is OBIS-SEAMAP. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 0c142cd0-6cce-4583-9e6c-0e2841ad7437.  OBIS-SEAMAP publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Ocean Biodiversity Information System.

Keywords

Occurrence; Observation; Marine Biology; Visual sighting; sea birds; foraging; Vessels; Sightings; Occurrence

External data

The resource data is also available in other formats

OBIS-SEAMAP Dataset Page https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/691 UTF-8 Interactive map
FGDC Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/691/fgdc UTF-8 XML
EML Metadata https://seamap.env.duke.edu/dataset/691/eml UTF-8 XML

Contacts

Sebastien Jaquemet
  • Owner ●
  • Originator ●
  • Point Of Contact
  • Primary contact
Laboratoire ECOMAR, Universite de la Reunion
OBIS-SEAMAP
  • Metadata Provider ●
  • Distributor
Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab, Duke University
  • A328 LSRC building
27708 Durham
NC
US

Geographic Coverage

Oceans,Europa Island,Mozambique Channel

Bounding Coordinates South West [-24.011, 38.95], North East [-19.726, 41.652]

Taxonomic Coverage

Scientific names are based on the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS).

Genus Fregata (Frigatebirds)
Species Daption capense (Cape petrel), Fregata minor (Great frigatebird), Fregetta grallaria (White-bellied storm petrel), Oceanodroma monorhis (Swinhoe's storm petrel), Onychoprion fuscatus (Sooty tern), Phaethon lepturus (White-tailed tropicbird), Pterodroma mollis (Soft-plumaged petrel), Puffinus carneipes (Flesh-footed shearwater), Puffinus lherminieri (Audubon's shearwater), Sula sula (Red-footed booby)

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 2003-09-08 / 2003-09-22

Project Data

No Description available

Title Foraging habitats of the seabird community of Europa Island (Mozambique Channel)
Funding NA

The personnel involved in the project:

Sebastien Jaquemet
  • Owner

Sampling Methods

NA

Study Extent NA

Method step description:

  1. NA

Collection Data

Collection Name zd_691
Collection Identifier zd_691
Parent Collection Identifier OBIS-SEAMAP

Bibliographic Citations

  1. Jaquemet, S., M. Le Corre, F. Marsac, M. Potier and H. Weimerskirch. 2005. Foraging habitats of the seabird community of Europa Island (Mozambique Channel). Marine Biology: 147(3):573-582.