1. Changes in marine ecosystems are easier to detect in upper‐level predators, like seabirds, which integrate trophic interactions throughout the food web.
2. Here, we examined whether diving parameters and complexity in the temporal organization of diving behavior of little penguins (Eudyptula minor ) are influenced by sea surface temperature (SST), water stratification, and wind speed—three oceanographic features influencing prey abundance and distribution in the water column.
3. Using fractal time series analysis, we found that foraging complexity, expressed as the degree of long‐range correlations or memory in the dive series, was associated with SST and water stratification throughout the breeding season, but not with wind speed. Little penguins foraging in warmer/more‐stratified waters exhibited greater determinism (memory) in foraging sequences, likely as a response to prey aggregations near the thermocline. They also showed higher foraging efficiency, performed more dives and dove to shallower depths than those foraging in colder/less‐stratified waters.
4. Reductions in the long‐term memory of dive sequences, or in other words increases in behavioral stochasticity, may suggest different strategies concerning the exploration–exploitation trade‐off under contrasting environmental conditions.

中文翻译：

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海洋热结构调节了觅食海鸟的潜水序列。

1. 在像海鸟这样的上层捕食者中，海洋生态系统的变化更易于发现，它们在整个食物网中整合了营养相互作用。
2. 在这里，我们研究了小企鹅（Eudyptula minor）的潜水行为的潜水参数和时间结构的复杂性是否受到海面温度（SST），水层化和风速的影响-这三个海洋特征影响猎物的丰度和分布。水柱。
3. 使用分形时间序列分析，我们发现觅食的复杂性（表示为潜水序列中的长期相关程度或记忆）与整个繁殖季节的SST和水分层有关，但与风速无关。在温暖/分层更多的水中觅食的小企鹅在觅食序列中表现出更大的确定性（记忆），这可能是对温跃线附近猎物聚集的反应。与在较冷/较不分层的水域中觅食相比，它们还具有更高的觅食效率，更深的潜水深度和更浅的深度。
4. 潜水序列长期记忆的减少，或者换句话说，行为随机性的增加，可能表明在不同环境条件下有关勘探与开发权衡的不同策略。