Living with gulls: trading off food and predation in the Sandwich Tern Sterna sandvicensis
Stienen, E.W.M. (2005). Living with gulls: trading off food and predation in the Sandwich Tern Sterna sandvicensis. Alterra Scientific Contributions, 15. PhD Thesis. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: Groningen. ISBN 90-367-2480-5. 192 pp.
Part of: Alterra Scientific Contributions. Alterra: Wageningen
Related to:
Stienen, E.W.M. (2007). Living with gulls: trading off food and predation in the Sandwich Tern Sterna sandvicensis, in: Mees, J. et al. (Ed.) VLIZ Young Scientists' Day, Brugge, Belgium 2 March 2007: book of abstracts. VLIZ Special Publication, 39: pp. 5-8, more
The low-lying, sandy areas along the Dutch coast offer important breeding opportunities for Sandwich Terns Sterna sandvicensis. Throughout the twentieth century Sandwich Terns nested here in fluctuating numbers. The Dutch population suffered from a major kill in the 1960s due to pesticide pollution causing the number of breeding pairs to drop from over 35,000 in the 1950s to 875 in 1965. After the spill of pesticides had stopped the numbers slowly increased but after 40 years the population has not yet fully recovered. The slow and incomplete recovery of the Dutch population was a source of concern and the present study aimed at a better understanding of the factors regulating the size of the Dutch Sandwich Tern population. Following the crash in the 1960s, the size of the Dutch population positively correlated with the amount of young herring present in the North Sea (Brenninkmeijer and Stienen, 1994). This relationship suggests that the Dutch Sandwich Tern population is limited by food availability. For this reason we concentrated the study on the feeding ecology of Sandwich Terns, hoping to find links with population dynamics.
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