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MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 466:249-259 (2012) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps09939 Spatio-temporal responses of black-tailed gulls to natural and anthropogenic food resources Ken Yoda1,*, Naoki Tomita2,4, Yuichi Mizutani1, Akira Narita3, Yasuaki Niizuma2 1Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan 2Faculty of Agriculture, Meijo University, 1-501 Shiogamaguchi, Tenpaku-ku, Nagoya 468-9502, Japan 3Aomori Prefectural School for the Deaf, 125-1 Aza-Inamori, Yasuda, Aomori 038-0021, Japan 4Present address: Division of Avian Conservation, Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, 115 Konoyama, Abiko City, Chiba 270-1145, Japan *Email: yoda.ken@nagoya-u.jp ABSTRACT: Urbanization affects animal movements. However, how urban omnivores respond to natural and human-related food sources with different spatio-temporal structures remains poorly understood. Here, we used animal-borne GPS, video data loggers and high-resolution mapping to examine the foraging behaviour of black-tailed gulls Larus crassirostris during their incubation and hatching period. As expected, the gulls fed not only on natural food at sea (e.g. anchovy and cuttlefish), but also on human-related food sources in 3 kinds of feeding grounds on land, i.e. fishery- or meat-processing plants or markets, private houses and paddy fields. Furthermore, the gulls responded to the different temporal and spatial dynamics of the feeding grounds. The gulls were distributed among these feeding grounds in response to the availability and ephemerality of each food source. Natural-food foraging trips (i.e. ocean) and anthropogenic-food trips (i.e. inland) have different spatial properties, showing a Lévy search of μ = 2 with larger foraging range and patterns closer to ballistic movement with smaller foraging range, respectively. Thus, the gulls responded flexibly to the contrasting food resources of natural and human-related food sources with different temporal and spatial heterogeneities. KEY WORDS: ■Larus crassirostris · Habitat use · Seabirds · GPS · Video · Data logger · Movement Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Yoda K, Tomita N, Mizutani Y, Narita A, Niizuma Y (2012) Spatio-temporal responses of black-tailed gulls to natural and anthropogenic food resources. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 466:249-259. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps09939 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 466. Online publication date: October 15, 2012 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2012 Inter-Research.