Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-1-2009

Keywords

Airport runways, Droppings, Environmental variables, Gulls, Habitat occupancy dynamics, Loafing, Management, Mathematical model, Rooftops, Salmonella

Abstract

Gulls are highly adaptable animals that thrive in proximity to humans. Although gulls enjoy legal protection in North America, England, and Europe, they often conflict with human interests by spreading disease, transporting contaminants, fouling public areas with droppings, and colliding with aircraft. Of particular concern are aggregates of " loafing" gulls that gather on parking lots, rooftops, and airport runways. Loafing in birds is a general state of immobility that involves behaviors such as sleeping, sitting, standing, resting, preening, and defecating. The ability to predict the incidence of aggregated loafing provides a first step toward the amelioration of bird/human conflicts. We used mathematical models to predict the aggregate loafing behavior of gulls as a function of environmental conditions and tested model portability across years, phase of breeding cycle, loafing location, and species. Because groups of loafing birds quickly reassemble after disturbance, algebraic models for the steady-state dynamics can be obtained from the differential equations using time-scale analysis. The accessible management tool requires data collection on an appropriate time scale and information-theoretic model selection from a suite of alternative algebraic models. ©2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Journal Title

Natural Resource Modeling

Volume

22

Issue

4

First Page

544

Last Page

563

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-7445.2009.00052.x

First Department

Biology

Second Department

Mathematics

Acknowledgements

Retrieved February 22, 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1939-7445.2009.00052.x

Download

Share

COinS