Balestrieri Rosario, Vento Roberto, Viviano Andrea, Mori Emiliano, Gili Claudia, Monti Flavio
Dipartimento Conservazione Animali Marini e Public Engagement, Stazione Zoologica "Anton Dohrn", Villa Comunale, 80121 Napoli, Italy.
Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e del Mare, Università di Palermo, Via Archirafi 22, 90123 Palermo, Italy.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Feb 14;13(4):656. doi: 10.3390/ani13040656.
Reporting on uncommon wide animal movements could help in depicting potential carry-over effects at the population level, particularly in an era of rapid climate and environmental changes. The razorbill (, Linnaeus 1758) is a regular passage migrant and winter visitor to Italian seas, but with sporadic presences usually involving small numbers of individuals. Irruptions have been occasionally documented, with the last records of an unusually large number dating back to 1982. However, in the past, irruptions have only been locally reported and poorly described. Here we report on an unprecedented massive irruption of hundreds of razorbills which occurred in the central Mediterranean Sea in November-December 2022. Using citizen science platforms and photos/videos shared on social networking sites (SNSs), we estimated the relative magnitude of the irruption and described the spatial distribution of birds at sea, as well as report cases of stranded individuals. We collected a total of 267 records, both from Italy and from neighboring countries. We also discuss the likely factors affecting razorbill irruption and stress the importance of open social platforms and data sharing to aid in the early detection and estimation of such events at a wide-scale, as well as for the monitoring of the mortality of the irrupted species.
报告罕见的大规模动物迁徙情况有助于描述种群层面潜在的遗留效应，尤其是在气候和环境快速变化的时代。刀嘴海雀（，林奈，1758年）是意大利海域的常见过境候鸟和冬季访客，但通常只是零星出现，涉及个体数量较少。偶尔有关于其爆发的记录，上一次大量出现的记录可追溯到1982年。然而，过去此类爆发仅在当地有报道，且描述简略。在此，我们报告了2022年11月至12月在地中海中部发生的前所未有的数百只刀嘴海雀大规模爆发事件。利用公民科学平台以及社交网站（SNS）上分享的照片/视频，我们估算了此次爆发的相对规模，描述了海上鸟类的空间分布，并报告了搁浅个体的情况。我们总共收集了来自意大利和邻国的267条记录。我们还讨论了影响刀嘴海雀爆发的可能因素，并强调开放社交平台和数据共享对于在大规模范围内早期发现和估算此类事件以及监测爆发物种死亡率的重要性。
