Radar, GPS, and accelerometers contribute enormously to our understanding of how animals thrive in places and conditions that are difficult to access for direct human observation. Dark nights, long distances, oceans… there are (almost) no barriers anymore for us to understand their life and find unifying ecological patterns. To this end, my research interest is to study overlooked behaviours that can contribute to the fitness and survival of bird individuals and populations.
Currently I am working on flexible biparental care in Barn owls (Tyto alba) in Switzerland, particularly studying their division of labour in chick provisioning. In their system where the male is the main contributor to chick rearing, my question is what drives the females to cooperate with their partner, how variable is this behaviour and what are the consequences for annual reproductive success. The forces in place can be related with their partner behaviour, yearly environmental changes, and their individual traits. By means of high-resolution movement data we know exactly how many prey the male and female can catch, deliver to the chicks or keep for themselves. These unprecedented kind of data can help understand the adaptive role of behavioural plasticity. Stay tuned.
Other projects under development regard static and dynamic conspecific interactions that can highlight important behavioural and ecological features, for example the shared use of certain areas between neighbouring breeding pairs, or attraction-neutral-avoidance reactions to conspecifics. Furthermore, I am interested (and developing with Kim Schalcher several studies) on the fine scale hunting behaviour of the Barn owl, investigating the effect of moon brightness, position and availability on hunting strategies. In addition, we are interested in whether Barn owls behave as predicted by the optimal foraging theory in relation to wind. If you are interested in those topics, keep an eye on my Twitter/X account for news, or if you want to collaborate do not hesitate to contact me.
Selected related publications:
Becciu P, Patterson A, Gjerdrum C, Madeiros J & Campioni L (2024) Fine-scale movement data of the endangered Bermuda petrel highlights surface foraging and greater nocturnal flight activity. bioRxiv.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.08.593164
Schalcher K, Milliet E, Sechaud R, Buehler R, Almasi B, Pottier S, Becciu P* , Roulin A* & Shepard ELC* (2023) Non-visual camouflage predicts hunting success in a wild predator. eLife. (* joint senior author)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.87775.1 (peer-reviewed but not revised version yet)
Becciu P, Sechaud R, Schalcher K, Plancherel C & Roulin A (2023) Prospecting movements link phenotypic traits to female annual potential fitness in a nocturnal predator. Scientific Reports 13: 5071.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32255-7 (Open Access)
Becciu P, Panuccio M, Dell’Omo G & Sapir N (2021) Groping in the fog: soaring migrants exhibit wider scatter in flight directions and respond differently to wind under low visibility conditions. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9: 767.
DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.745002 (Open Access)
Becciu P, Rotics S, Horvitz N, Kaatz M, Fiedler W, Zurell D, Flack A, Jeltsch F, Wikelski M, Nathan R and Sapir N (2020) Causes and consequences of facultative sea crossing in a soaring migrant. Functional Ecology 34: 840-852.
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13539
Zavalaga CB, Dell’Omo G, Becciu P and Yoda K (2011) Patterns of GPS tracks suggest nocturnal foraging by incubating Peruvian Pelicans (Pelecanus thagus). PLoS ONE 6(5): e19966.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019966 (Open Access)
PAOLO BECCIU 