Tracking tags have been used to map the distributions of a wide variety of avian species, but few studies have examined whether the use of these devices has impacts on the study animals that may bias the spatial data obtained. As Global Positioning System (GPS) tags small enough for deployment on terns (family: Laridae) have only recently become available, until now tracking of this group has been conducted by following unmanipulated individuals by boat, which offers a means of comparing distributions obtained from GPS‐tracking. We compared the utilization distributions (UDs) of breeding Arctic Terns Sterna paradisaea obtained by GPS‐tracking 10 individuals over 2 weeks, with UDs derived from contemporaneous visual boat tracks from 81 individuals. The 50% and 95% UDs of both methods had high similarity scores, indicating good agreement in the density distributions derived from the two methods. The footprints of the UDs of tagged birds were ~ 75–80% larger, which may reflect an effect of tagging on foraging range or the occasional inability to follow by boat individuals which roamed further from the colony. We also compared the nest attendance and chick provisioning rates of adults that were (1) fitted with a GPS tag and leg‐flag, (2) handled and marked with a leg‐flag but not tagged and (3) fitted with a leg‐flag in a previous year but unhandled in the year of the study. There was some evidence that birds fitted with both a GPS tag and leg‐flag spent slightly less time at the nest compared with unhandled birds and those fitted with a leg‐flag only. Both treatments where birds were fitted with a leg‐flag in the year of the study had similarly lower provisioning rates to those of unhandled control birds > 48 h after handling, suggesting that negative effects on provisioning are due to capture and handling or leg‐flag attachment rather than to GPS tag attachment/loading per se. Overall brood‐provisioning rate was compensated for by the increased effort by the unhandled partner. Our study suggests that despite slight effects of GPS‐tagging on behaviour, the estimates of marine density distribution obtained were very similar to those of unmanipulated birds.

中文翻译：

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GPS标签对北极燕鸥Sterna paradisaea繁殖行为和海洋分布的影响

跟踪标签已被用来绘制各种鸟类的分布图，但是很少有研究检查这些设备的使用是否会对研究动物产生影响，从而可能使获得的空间数据产生偏差。由于全球定位系统（GPS）标签足够小，可以部署在燕鸥上（家庭：Lariidae），直到最近才可用，直到现在通过乘船跟随未操纵的人员进行对该组的跟踪，这提供了一种比较从GPS追踪。我们比较了繁殖北极燕鸥Sterna paradisaea的利用率分布（UDs）通过GPS跟踪2周内的10个人获得了UD，而UD则来自81个人的同期视觉船航迹。两种方法的UD的50％和95％具有较高的相似性评分，表明从两种方法得出的密度分布中具有良好的一致性。带标签的鸟类的UD的足迹约大75％至80％，这可能反映了标签对觅食范围的影响或偶尔无法漫游到远离该殖民地的船民的影响。我们还比较了（1）装有GPS标签和腿旗的成年人，（2）带有腿旗但没有标记的人和（3）装有腿旗的成年人的鸟巢出勤率和雏鸡供应率。在上一年中标记，但在研究年份未处理。有证据表明，与未处理的鸟和仅装有腿旗的鸟相比，同时装有GPS标签和腿旗的鸟在鸟巢上花费的时间略少。在研究当年，两种安装了带腿标志的鸟类的处理方法与未处理的对照鸟相比，在处理后48小时内的调配率均较低，这表明对捕获的负面影响是由于捕获和处理或带腿标志附件，而不是GPS标签的附件/加载本身。未处理的合作伙伴增加了工作量，从而弥补了总的产卵率。我们的研究表明，尽管GPS标记对行为有轻微影响，但获得的海洋密度分布的估计与未操纵的鸟类非常相似。