E&E Seminar: No such thing as ghosts? Foraging habitat segregation unlikely to be coevolved in the two sympatric Phoebetria albatrosses

Competition is often proposed to drive niche segregation along multiple axes in speciose communities. Understanding spatial partitioning of foraging areas is particularly important in species that are constrained to a central place. Contemporary habitat partitioning is sometimes hypothesised to be evidence of competition shaping coevolution, citing a potential ‘ghost of competition past’ (Connell 1980). In this talk, I will present a natural experiment examining variation in habitat preferences of congeneric Southern Ocean predators in sympatry and allopatry, to show that ghost-hunting is much harder than it first appears. I will also discuss some upcoming work at the interface of seabird movement ecology and conservation planning.