A new study of sub-Antarctic seabirds shows that their community structure (how they co-exist and share resources) is unaffected by annual changes in availability of different types of prey, including Antarctic krill (a small shrimp-like crustacean). Reporting this month (November) in the Journal of Animal Ecology, a team of scientists studied the diet and feeding relationships of 13 species of seabirds on the sub-Antarctic island of Bird Island, near South Georgia. The results show that even if food availability changes, the different seabird species maintain roughly the same position in the food web.
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