Hurricanes are becoming more powerful as a result of the climate crisis.
As a result, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the United Kingdom's Swansea University investigated the wind speeds that different seabird species can withstand.
The researchers were able to demonstrate that the different species are well adapted to the average wind conditions in their breeding grounds, but employ different strategies to avoid flying through the storm.
Seabirds In The Eye Of The Storm
(Photo : PATRICK HERTZOG/AFP via Getty Images)
Seabirds, like all other animal species, must be well adapted to their ecological niche in order to survive, as per ScienceDaily.
Natural selection is influenced by environmental conditions such as temperature, vegetation, precipitation, and many other factors: whoever is best adapted survives.
Previous research has concentrated on how animals can adapt to rising temperatures.
However, because they hunt on the open sea, seabirds are also subjected to gale force winds.
Elham Nourani of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, the study's first author, wondered how birds react to cyclone-force winds and what maximum wind speeds they can tolerate.
She and her colleagues used flight data from 18 different species to investigate whether the species avoid certain wind speeds based on their flight characteristics.
Also Read: Invasive Mouse Threatens Albatross Population
Hurricanes Are Becoming More Powerful As A Result Of The Climate Crisis
As a result, researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior and the United Kingdom's Swansea University investigated the wind speeds that different seabird species can withstand, as per Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
The researchers were able to demonstrate that the different species are well adapted to the average wind conditions in their breeding grounds, but employ different strategies to avoid flying through the storm.
One of the albatross' behaviors surprised the scientists during their research.
Albatrosses are fast fliers because they frequently fly through storms in the Southern Ocean.
Tropical species, on the other hand, are adapted to lower wind speeds every day and only very rarely to high wind speeds.
Tropical storms, on the other hand, are much more powerful than those in the Southern Ocean, according to Emily Shepard, the study's co-author.
This means that albatrosses can fly in almost any weather, whereas tropical species must develop special strategies to avoid strong winds.
Tropical storms can reach twice the speed that birds can tolerate.
What would be considered extreme wind for a tropical species is normal for an albatross.
According to Nourani, the definition of extreme conditions varies by species.
However, just because albatrosses can fly in high winds does not mean they do: sometimes they fly right into the eye of the storm, as observed in this study with an Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross.
While the wind speed within the storm was 68 kilometers per hour, it was only 30 in the storm's eye, allowing the bird to fly for twelve hours.
What surprised the researchers the most was that the birds sometimes avoided wind speeds at which they could fly in other scenarios.
They suspect that the birds are using this strategy to avoid getting off course.
The study's findings may aid in determining which seabirds can withstand future changes in storm intensity.
Related article: Oldest Known Albatross Gets Ready To Lay Another Egg At 64 Years Old
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