At the end of our time in the Karnovsky lab this summer, Kristen and I created Posters displaying some of the preliminary data we analyzed since our trip to the Channel Islands. Kristen’s beautiful poster, titled “Murrelets on the Move: Seasonal Density of Xantus’s Murrelets near Santa Barbara Island,” discussed how the distribution of XAMU around SBI was affected by surface water temperature, and how both distribution and temperature changed between April and May. Kristen found that surface temperature was significantly cooler in April than in May. She also found that XAMU prefer the colder water to the west of SBI, possibly because of the higher abundance of prey (something we hope to confirm this semester).
A beautiful figure from Kristen's poster
My poster was titled “Changes in At Sea Distribution of Xantus’s Murrelets Since 1976,” and it focused on the differences in XAMU counts and distribution between our data collected this year, and data collected in the same months in 1976. I found that XAMU numbers were much higher in 1976 than in 2009, and that XAMU were found in larger numbers along western transects in both months and in both years.
A figure from Augie's poster
This semester, we will continue to look deeper into how the physical traits of the water around SBI affect the XAMU distribution during breeding months. We will also soon begin to analyze the distribution of zooplankton around the island and how it affects XAMU distribution. There is still a lot of analysis to be done!