Kalender

Dear all,

The next BCCR Monday Seminar will be given by Thomas Larsen from the University of Kiel, Germany. He will present his work on Century-scale ecological shifts in Arctic guillemots: Linking isotopic archives to oceanographic change.

The seminar will take place in the usual BCCR seminar room (4th floor of the West wing) at 11:00.

We hope to see you there!

Best regards,

Fiona and Johannes

 
Abstract

Arctic seabirds face unprecedented environmental pressures from climate change and shifting ocean conditions. Understanding how these species have responded to past oceanographic changes is critical for predicting future ecosystem trajectories. This talk presents isotopic evidence from historical and contemporary guillemot tissues that reveals significant ecological shifts over the past century. Common guillemots (Uria aalge) and Brünich's guillemots (Uria lomvia) show distinct isotopic signals between historical (pre-1920s) and contemporary periods, suggesting changes in foraging ecology, diet composition, and potentially oceanographic conditions.
By integrating these biogeochemical archives with Bergen's ecological, oceanographic, and climatic models, we can contextualize century-scale changes in seabird ecology against documented shifts in ocean temperature, productivity, and circulation patterns. Compound-specific amino acid isotope analysis promises to further resolve the drivers of these changes, distinguishing between baseline shifts in ocean biogeochemistry and true trophic-level changes in seabird foraging. This work demonstrates how combining historical specimen archives with modern analytical approaches and oceanographic models can illuminate ecosystem responses to environmental change and inform conservation strategies for Arctic marine predators.

Speaker information

Thomas Larsen is a Research Scientist at the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at the University of Kiel, Germany. His research bridges ecology, biogeochemistry, and archaeology to understand how environmental changes and human activities shape aquatic and terrestrial food webs. He pioneered the use of stable isotope fingerprinting of amino acids, a method that has revolutionized the tracing of biosynthetic origins in ecological studies. With two decades of international research experience across the US, Denmark, Spain, and Germany, his work spans marine food web ecology, Arctic seabird ecology, and ecotoxicology. Recently, he has been developing advanced spatial isotope models (isoscapes) using Sr, C, N, and O stable isotopes for terrestrial regions, expanding the toolkit for tracing animal movement and environmental change across landscapes.

Join Zoom Meeting 
https://uib.zoom.us/j/68304284910?pwd=2IgsDMWHuJlQw3XFHSTo3OoGBsRrhz.1

Meeting ID: 683 0428 4910
Password: 7pwZK4mG