scholarly journals Distribution of common eiders Somateria mollissima during the brood-rearing and moulting periods in the St. Lawrence Estuary, Canada

2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Diéval ◽  
Jean-François Giroux ◽  
Jean-Pierre L. Savard
Keyword(s):  
Somateria Mollissima ◽  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Brood Rearing ◽  
Common Eiders ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary

The food and feeding of common eiders in the St. Lawrence estuary in summer

1974 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Cantin ◽  
J. Bédard ◽  
H. Milne
Keyword(s):  
Intertidal Zone ◽  
Maximum Growth ◽  
Somateria Mollissima ◽  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Common Eiders ◽  
Feeding Activities ◽  
Food And Feeding ◽  
South Shore ◽  
Natural Foods ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary

The study was conducted in the St. Lawrence estuary during 1969 and 1970. The food abundance in the intertidal zone was measured in four Sampling stations located on the south shore of the river; the measurements revealed that over 95% of the available food of the common eider (Somateria mollissima) consisted of Littorina spp., Mytilus edulis, and Gammarus oceanicus. Both adult and young birds showed a distinct rhythm of feeding activities associated with tidal level. During the prenesting period, herring eggs and Nereis virens made up most of the food of adult common eiders. When accompanying ducklings, females ate mostly Littorina spp. and amphipods. Littorina spp. made up between 30 and 97% of the diet of the ducklings, the importance of this gastropod growing with age of the bird. Energy requirements during maximum growth were evaluated at about 460 kcal/bird per day on ducklings (age 54 days) fed natural foods, while between week 3 and week 8 it stood at about 520 kcal/bird per day in ducklings fed "turkey starter." These figures were used to assess the importance of the food removed by the eiders from the intertidal zone during the summer. We conclude that between 10 and 30% (according to the area) of the standing-crop biomass of Littorina alone (in July) is removed by the ducklings and the females accompanying them. At various moments through the season, these birds remove between 40 and 100 metric tons of mollusks per day from the intertidal zone.

Assessment of the Importance of Nutrient Recycling by Seabirds in the St. Lawrence Estuary

1980 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Bédard ◽  
J. C. Therriault ◽  
J. Bérubé
Keyword(s):  
Nutrient Recycling ◽  
Vertical Mixing ◽  
Nutrient Budget ◽  
Somateria Mollissima ◽  
Nutrient Regeneration ◽  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Nitrogenous Compounds ◽  
The One ◽  
Excretion Rates ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary

Feeding and excretion rates of the herring, great black-backed, and ring-billed gulls (Larus argentatus, L. marinus, and L. delawarensis), and of the common eider (Somateria mollissima) were measured in captive individuals and the concentration of soluble nutrients in their excreta was established.The bird population in a 30.6-km2 coastal study area varied between 2500 and 12 500 individuals between early May and mid-November. These birds excreted a seasonal total of 5.8, 4.2, and 48.1 kg-at. of soluble silicate, phosphate, and nitrogenous compounds, respectively. Such quantities, when introduced in the nutrient budget of the coastal area studied, are found to be negligible, considering the levels of nutrients generally recorded in these waters on the one hand, and the relative importance of alternate sources such as land drainage and vertical mixing on the other. Thus, the seabirds can hardly be viewed, except perhaps under the most special circumstances, as important agents in the dynamic nutrient regeneration processes of marine coastal waters of the St. Lawrence Estuary.Key words: nutrient recycling, seabirds, St. Lawrence Estuary

Fledgling production and population trends in Finnish common eiders (Somateria mollissima mollissima) — evidence for density dependence

2006 ◽  
Vol 84 (7) ◽  
pp. 1038-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Hario ◽  
Jukka Rintala
Keyword(s):  
Density Dependence ◽  
Viral Infections ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Somateria Mollissima ◽  
Breeding Parameters ◽  
Brood Rearing ◽  
Common Eiders ◽  
Water Rate ◽  
The Baltic

We present a 57-year time series of a common eider, Somateria mollissima mollissima (L., 1758), population from one of the core monitoring areas in the Baltic Sea, the Söderskär bird sanctuary, Gulf of Finland. We applied permutation tests to inspect the relationships between breeding parameters and population density. Of the parameters studied, only fledging rate (during a 34-year period) showed a significant negative relationship with population size, indicating density dependence. Furthermore, the fledging rate responded strongly to the population growth rate and to the rate of recruitment. Clutch size and duckling (downy young entering the water) rate did not show negative density dependence. Thus, losses during brood rearing seem to be the regulatory factor. The population decline at Söderskär is similar to those recorded in many other monitoring sites around the southern coast of Finland. Compared with data from more productive sea districts in northwestern Europe (Dutch Wadden Sea and Scottish North Sea), the Finnish fledging rates do not seem excessively bad. There are indications of viral infections playing an increasingly central role in duckling mortality, whereas adult female mortality has not been affected.

scholarly journals Benthic fluxes of dissolved organic nitrogen in the lower St. Lawrence estuary and implications for selective organic matter degradation

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 7609-7622 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Alkhatib ◽  
P. A. del Giorgio ◽  
Y. Gelinas ◽  
M. F. Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Organic Matter ◽  
Dissolved Organic Nitrogen ◽  
Organic Nitrogen ◽  
Bottom Water ◽  
Estuarine Sediments ◽  
Internal Source ◽  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Element Partitioning ◽  
Sediment Porewaters ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary

Abstract. The distribution of dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and carbon (DOC) in sediment porewaters was determined at nine locations along the St. Lawrence estuary and in the gulf of St. Lawrence. In a previous manuscript (Alkhatib et al., 2012a), we have shown that this study area is characterized by gradients in the sedimentary particulate organic matter (POM) reactivity, bottom water oxygen concentrations, and benthic respiration rates. Based on the porewater profiles, we estimated the benthic diffusive fluxes of DON and DOC in the same area. Our results show that DON fluxed out of the sediments at significant rates (110 to 430 μmol m−2 d−1). DON fluxes were positively correlated with sedimentary POM reactivity and varied inversely with sediment oxygen exposure time (OET), suggesting direct links between POM quality, aerobic remineralization and the release of DON to the water column. DON fluxes were on the order of 30 to 64% of the total benthic inorganic fixed N loss due to denitrification, and often exceeded the diffusive nitrate fluxes into the sediments. Hence they represented a large fraction of the total benthic N exchange, a result that is particularly important in light of the fact that DON fluxes are usually not accounted for in estuarine and coastal zone nutrient budgets. In contrast to DON, DOC fluxes out of the sediments did not show any significant spatial variation along the Laurentian Channel (LC) between the estuary and the gulf (2100 ± 100 μmol m−2 d−1). The molar C / N ratio of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in porewater and the overlying bottom water varied significantly along the transect, with lowest C / N in the lower estuary (5–6) and highest C / N (> 10) in the gulf. Large differences between the C / N ratios of porewater DOM and POM are mainly attributed to a combination of selective POM hydrolysis and elemental fractionation during subsequent DOM mineralization, but selective adsorption of DOM to mineral phases could not be excluded as a potential C / N fractionating process. The extent of this C- versus N- element partitioning seems to be linked to POM reactivity and redox conditions in the sediment porewaters. Our results thus highlight the variable effects selective organic matter (OM) preservation can have on bulk sedimentary C / N ratios, decoupling the primary source C / N signatures from those in sedimentary paleoenvironmental archives. Our study further underscores that the role of estuarine sediments as efficient sinks of bioavailable nitrogen is strongly influenced by the release of DON during early diagenetic reactions, and that DON fluxes from continental margin sediments represent an important internal source of N to the ocean.

Pre-exposure to Cu2+ and CuO NPs leads to infection of caged blue mussels, Mytilus edulis L., by pathogenic microalga: Pilot study in the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (Québec, Canada)

2021 ◽  
Vol 166 ◽  
pp. 112180
Author(s):  
Michael Zuykov ◽  
Galina Kolyuchkina ◽  
Graeme Spiers ◽  
Michel Gosselin ◽  
Philippe Archambault ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Mytilus Edulis ◽  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Blue Mussels ◽  
Cuo Nps ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary

scholarly journals Herd immunity drives the epidemic fadeout of avian cholera in Arctic-nesting seabirds

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacintha G. B. van Dijk ◽  
Samuel A. Iverson ◽  
H. Grant Gilchrist ◽  
N. Jane Harms ◽  
Holly L. Hennin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Colony Size ◽  
Pasteurella Multocida ◽  
Herd Immunity ◽  
Reproductive Number ◽  
Somateria Mollissima ◽  
Common Eiders ◽  
Serological Status ◽  
Antibody Titers ◽  
Avian Cholera

AbstractAvian cholera, caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida, is a common and important infectious disease of wild birds in North America. Between 2005 and 2012, avian cholera caused annual mortality of widely varying magnitudes in Northern common eiders (Somateria mollissima borealis) breeding at the largest colony in the Canadian Arctic, Mitivik Island, Nunavut. Although herd immunity, in which a large proportion of the population acquires immunity to the disease, has been suggested to play a role in epidemic fadeout, immunological studies exploring this hypothesis have been missing. We investigated the role of three potential drivers of fadeout of avian cholera in eiders, including immunity, prevalence of infection, and colony size. Each potential driver was examined in relation to the annual real-time reproductive number (Rt) of P. multocida, previously calculated for eiders at Mitivik Island. Each year, colony size was estimated and eiders were closely monitored, and evaluated for infection and serological status. We demonstrate that acquired immunity approximated using antibody titers to P. multocida in both sexes was likely a key driver for the epidemic fadeout. This study exemplifies the importance of herd immunity in influencing the dynamics and fadeout of epidemics in a wildlife population.

Movement of sturgeons ( Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus and A. fulvescens ) in the St. Lawrence Estuary: A 35‐year tagging study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yves Paradis ◽  
Marc Pépino ◽  
Simon Bernatchez ◽  
Denis Fournier ◽  
Léon L’Italien ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Lawrence Estuary ◽  
St Lawrence Estuary ◽  
Acipenser Oxyrinchus
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