Département Biologie des Populations, CEFE-CNRS UMR 5175, Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, 1919 Route de Mende, Montpellier 34293, France.
Ecol Appl. 2010 Sep;20(6):1498-503. doi: 10.1890/09-1586.1.
Marine ecosystems are critically challenged by human activities, urgently calling for better management practices. It has been proposed that conspicuous top predators such as seabirds may be used as ecological indicators. This approach requires intimate knowledge of relationships connecting seabird parameters to other ecosystem components (i.e., population plasticity, underlined by individual reaction norms), information which remains scarce. Furthermore, if seabirds are to be used as long-term indicators, the strength of the average plastic response in a studied population has to be sustained through time and space. This second aspect has so far been startlingly neglected, although previous studies underline shifts in the plasticity of seabird traits and detail the tools allowing an evolutionary and ecological study of plasticity in bird populations. Building upon these advances, we argue that gradual or sudden spatiotemporal changes in seabird phenotypic plasticity should not be neglected when designing monitoring schemes. We conclude that seabirds are best used as qualitative sentinels, rather than as quantitative indicators.
海洋生态系统受到人类活动的严重挑战，迫切需要更好的管理实践。有人提出，显眼的顶级捕食者，如海鸟，可以作为生态指标。这种方法需要深入了解海鸟参数与其他生态系统组成部分（即个体反应规范所强调的种群可塑性）之间的关系，而这方面的信息仍然很少。此外，如果要将海鸟用作长期指标，那么在研究种群中，平均可塑性反应的强度必须在时间和空间上保持稳定。到目前为止，这第二个方面令人惊讶地被忽视了，尽管之前的研究强调了海鸟特征可塑性的变化，并详细介绍了允许对鸟类种群可塑性进行进化和生态研究的工具。在此基础上，我们认为，在设计监测方案时，不应忽视海鸟表型可塑性的逐渐或突然的时空变化。我们的结论是，海鸟最好被用作定性的哨兵，而不是定量的指标。
