Ecosystem response persists after a prolonged marine heatwave.

Some of the longest and most comprehensive marine ecosystem monitoring programs were established in the Gulf of Alaska following the environmental disaster of the Exxon Valdez oil spill over 30 years ago. These monitoring programs have been successful in assessing recovery from oil spill impacts, and their continuation decades later has now provided an unparalleled assessment of ecosystem responses to another newly emerging global threat, marine heatwaves. The 2014-2016 northeast Pacific marine heatwave (PMH) in the Gulf of Alaska was the longest lasting heatwave globally over the past decade, with some cooling, but also continued warm conditions through 2019. Our analysis of 187 time series from primary production to commercial fisheries and nearshore intertidal to offshore oceanic domains demonstrate abrupt changes across trophic levels, with many responses persisting up to at least 5 years after the onset of the heatwave. Furthermore, our suite of metrics showed novel community-level groupings relative to at least a decade prior to the heatwave. Given anticipated increases in marine heatwaves under current climate projections, it remains uncertain when or if the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem will return to a pre-PMH state.

Corticosterone levels of tufted puffins vary with breeding stage, body condition index, and reproductive performance.

Corticosterone (CORT) levels in free-living animals are seasonally modulated and vary with environmental conditions. Although most studies measure total CORT concentrations, levels of corticosteroid binding globulin (CBG) may also be modulated, thus altering the concentration of CORT available for diffusion into tissues (free CORT). We investigated the seasonal dynamics of CBG, total CORT, and free CORT in breeding tufted puffins (Fratercula cirrhata) during 2 years characterized by high rates of nestling growth and survival. We then compared concentrations of total CORT in this population to levels in chick-rearing puffins at another colony during 2 years with low productivity. At the high productivity colony, levels of CBG, total baseline CORT, free baseline CORT, and total maximum CORT were all higher prior to egg-laying than during late incubation and late chick-rearing. Levels of CBG were positively correlated with body condition index (BCI) and free baseline CORT was negatively correlated with BCI. Total baseline levels of CORT during chick-rearing were two to four times higher at the colony with low rates of nestling growth and survival. Our results demonstrate the need for long-term datasets to disentangle seasonal trends in CORT levels from trends driven by changes in environmental conditions. Given the negative effects associated with chronic elevation of CORT, our results indicate the cost of reproduction may be higher during years characterized by low productivity.

Prey density and the behavioral flexibility of a marine predator: the common murre (Uria aalge).

Flexible time budgets allow individual animals to buffer the effects of variable food availability by allocating more time to foraging when food density decreases. This trait should be especially important for marine predators that forage on patchy and ephemeral food resources. We examined flexible time allocation by a long-lived marine predator, the Common Murre (Uria aalge), using data collected in a five-year study at three colonies in Alaska (USA) with contrasting environmental conditions. Annual hydroacoustic surveys revealed an order-of-magnitude variation in food density among the 15 colony-years of study. We used data on parental time budgets and local prey density to test predictions from two hypotheses: Hypothesis A, the colony attendance of seabirds varies nonlinearly with food density; and Hypothesis B, flexible time allocation of parent murres buffers chicks against variable food availability. Hypothesis A was supported; colony attendance by murres was positively correlated with food over a limited range of poor-to-moderate food densities, but independent of food over a broader range of higher densities. This is the first empirical evidence for a nonlinear response of a marine predator's time budget to changes in prey density. Predictions from Hypothesis B were largely supported: (1) chick-feeding rates were fairly constant over a wide range of densities and only dropped below 3.5 meals per day at the low end of prey density, and (2) there was a nonlinear relationship between chick-feeding rates and time spent at the colony, with chick-feeding rates only declining after time at the colony by the nonbrooding parent was reduced to a minimum. The ability of parents to adjust their foraging time by more than 2 h/d explains why they were able to maintain chick-feeding rates of more than 3.5 meals/d across a 10-fold range in local food density.