Postdoctoral Fellowship: OCE-PRF: Evaluating the impacts of climate-mediated shifts in prey quality on predator bioenergetics and productivity

Many marine predators have evolved the timing of key life events, such as reproduction, to coincide with seasonal peaks in high-quality prey. However, rising ocean temperatures are shifting prey abundance and distributions, often reducing the availability of energy rich prey. This can reduce the amount of energy available for predators to find prey and reduce their reproductive output. This project will investigate the relationship between prey quality and population-level productivity using common terns in the Gulf of Maine. The project will assess the importance of reduced prey quality to tern energetic budgets and predict the consequences of climate-mediated shifts in prey fields on predator population persistence. This project will also provide research opportunities for undergraduates, mentoring opportunities for the fellow, and include free community lectures on topics related to this project. Leveraging reproductive output data, fecal DNA metabarcoding, bomb calorimetry, and GPS tracking, this project will assess the relationship between prey quality, bioenergetics, and population level productivity using common terns (Sterna hirundo) in the Gulf of Maine as the study system. Over the last decade, the Gulf of Maine has exhibited rapid warming leading to declines in lipid-rich forage fish populations coinciding with shifts in common tern diet and population fluctuations. The specific objectives of this study are to 1) assess the correlative relationship between annual prey quality and population level productivity, and 2) use identified relationships to predict potential consequences of future change in prey quality to predator population persistence. As climate change drives ocean warming, continuous shifts in prey composition and abundances will have harmful effects on predators that cannot alter their movements on similar timescales as their prey. Understanding the underlying mechanisms by which shifts in prey fields impact marine predators is critical for anticipating future changes to ecosystem structures under climate change scenarios. This project is jointly funded by the Ocean Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships Program, and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.