Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor) Diet Composition at Three Colonies: can stable isotope analysis be used to detect dietary trends?

TL;DRAbstract

Many seabird populations are in decline due to shifts in food quality and availability, which can affect reproductive performance. Maintaining healthy seabird populations is of great importance to New Zealand, which has a high diversity of seabirds. Stomach flushing can be used to monitor dietary shifts by determining prey composition and species size, but provides only a “snapshot” of dietary information from one day of foraging and may be intrusive. Stable isotope analysis is a less invasive dietary monitoring technique that provides dietary information over a longer period, but its effectiveness has not been determined in New Zealand. Stable isotope analysis was evaluated as a potential dietary monitoring technique by: (1) determining little penguin (Eudyptula minor) prey species composition and size at three colonies on the South Island, New Zealand using the stomach flushing technique; (2) determining if analysis of stable isotopes δ15N and δ13C in blood and feather tissues can de

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