Biologging devices are providing detailed insights into the behaviour and movement of animals in their natural environments. It is usually assumed that this method of gathering data does not impact on the behaviour observed. However, potential negative effects on birds have rarely been investigated before field‐based studies are initiated. Seabirds which both fly and use pursuit diving may be particularly sensitive to increases in drag and load resulting from carrying biologging devices. We studied chick‐rearing adult common guillemots Uria aalge equipped with and without back‐mounted GPS tags over short deployments of a few days. Concurrently guillemots carried small leg‐mounted TDR devices (time‐depth recorders) providing activity data throughout. Changes in body mass and breeding success were followed for device equipped and control guillemots. At the colony level guillemots lost body mass throughout the chick‐rearing period. When‐equipped with the additional GPS tag, the guillemots lost mass at close to twice the rate they did when equipped with only the smaller leg‐mounted TDR device. The elevated mass loss suggests an impact on energy expenditure or foraging performance. When equipped with GPS tags diving performance, time‐activity budgets and daily patterns of activity were unchanged, yet dive depth distributions differed. We review studies of tag‐effects in guillemots Uria sp. finding elevated mass loss and reduced chick‐provisioning to be the most commonly observed effects. Less information is available for behavioural measures, and results vary between studies. In general, small tags deployed over several days appear to have small or no measurable effect on the behavioural variables commonly observed in most guillemot tagging studies. However, there may still be impacts on fitness via physiological effects and/or reduced chick‐provisioning, while more detailed measures of behaviour (e.g. using accelerometery) may reveal effects on diving and flight performance.

中文翻译：

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后装式生物记录仪对繁殖海鸟的状况，潜水和飞行性能的影响

生物记录设备正在为动物在自然环境中的行为和运动提供详细的见识。通常假定这种收集数据的方法不会影响观察到的行为。但是，在开始实地研究之前，很少研究对鸟类的潜在负面影响。飞行和使用潜水的海鸟对携带生物测井仪引起的阻力和负载的增加可能特别敏感。我们研究了成鸟饲养的成年海雀科的乌里亚海藻在短短的几天内部署了带有或不带有后置GPS标签的设备。同时，海雀科的鸟携带小型的腿部安装的TDR设备（时间深度记录器），可提供活动数据。装备了设备和控制海雀科的动物后，体重发生了变化，繁殖成功。在殖民地水平，海雀科的鸟在整个雏鸡饲养期间损失了体重。当配备额外的GPS标签时，海雀科动物的体重损失几乎是仅安装在腿上较小的TDR设备上的两倍。质量损失增加表明对能量消耗或觅食性能有影响。配备GPS标签的潜水性能，时间活动预算和日常活动模式不变，但潜水深度分布却有所不同。我们回顾了海雀科动物的标签效应研究乌利亚SP。发现增加的质量损失和减少的雏鸡供应是最常见的效果。可用于行为测量的信息较少，不同研究的结果也不同。通常，在几天内部署的小标签似乎对大多数海雀鸟标签研究中通常观察到的行为变量影响很小或没有可测量的影响。但是，可能仍会通过生理效应和/或减少雏鸡的准备活动来影响健身，而更详细的行为量度（例如，使用加速度计）可能会显示出对潜水和飞行性能的影响。