Habitat loss can force animals to relocate to new areas, where they would need to adjust to an unfamiliar resource landscape and find new breeding sites. Relocation may be costly and could compromise reproduction. Here, we explored how the Lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus), a colonial breeding seabird species with a wide ecological niche, responds to the loss of its breeding habitat. We investigated how individuals adjusted their foraging behaviour after relocating to another colony due to breeding site destruction, and whether there were any reproductive consequences in the first years after relocation. To this end, we compared offspring growth between resident individuals and individuals that recently relocated to the same colony due to breeding habitat loss. Using GPS-tracking, we further investigated the foraging behaviour of resident individuals in both colonies, as well as that of relocated individuals, as enhanced foraging effort could represent a potential driver of reproductive costs. We found negative consequences of relocation for offspring development, which were apparent when brood demand was experimentally increased. Recently relocated gulls travelled further distances for foraging than residents, as they often visited more distant foraging sites used by residents breeding in their natal colony as well as new areas outside the home range of the residents in the colony where they settled. Our results imply that relocated individuals did not yet optimally adapt to the new food landscape, which was unexpected, given the social information on foraging locations that may have been available from resident neighbours in their new breeding colony. Even though the short-term reproductive costs were comparatively low, we show that generalist species, such as the Lesser black-backed gull, may be more vulnerable to habitat loss than expected. Long term studies are needed to investigate how long individuals are affected by their relocation in order to better assess potential population effects of (breeding) habitat loss.

中文翻译：

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繁殖栖息地的丧失揭示了有限的觅食灵活性，并增加了殖民繁殖海鸟的觅食努力

栖息地的丧失会迫使动物迁徙到新的地区，在那里他们需要适应不熟悉的资源状况并寻找新的繁殖地点。搬迁可能会很昂贵，并可能影响繁殖。在这里，我们探索了具有较小生态位的殖民繁殖海鸟物种小黑背海鸥（Larus fuscus）如何应对其繁殖栖息地的丧失。我们调查了由于繁殖地点被破坏而搬迁到另一个殖民地后，个体如何调整觅食行为，以及在迁徙后的头几年是否有任何繁殖后果。为此，我们比较了居民个体和由于繁殖栖息地丧失而最近搬迁到同一殖民地的个体之间的后代生长情况。使用GPS追踪，我们进一步调查了两个殖民地居民以及搬迁居民的觅食行为，因为加大觅食力度可能代表了繁殖成本的潜在驱动因素。我们发现搬迁对后代发育的负面影响，这在实验需求增加时很明显。最近搬迁的海鸥比居民更远地觅食，因为它们经常走访更远的觅食地点，这些地点被居民在其出生的殖民地以及定居的居民居住范围之外的新地方繁殖。我们的结果表明，搬迁的人员尚未最佳地适应新的饮食环境，这是出乎意料的，提供了有关觅食地点的社会信息，这些居民可能已从其新繁殖群体的居住邻居那里获得了这些信息。即使短期繁殖成本相对较低，我们也表明，通配物种，例如小黑背鸥，可能比预期的更容易遭受生境丧失。需要进行长期研究以调查个人受其迁移影响的时间，以便更好地评估（繁殖）栖息地丧失的潜在种群影响。