Threats to Seabirds Across the Annual Cycle: From Breeding Colonies to Pelagic Ecosystems

Seabird species are exposed to multiple threats both at insular breeding sites and across pelagic areas, where they increasingly overlap with human activities, potentially resulting in cumulative impacts. Climate change represents an additional challenge, whose effects may interact with and be difficult to disentangle from other anthropogenic pressures. At breeding sites, invasive species, habitat loss, pollution and human disturbance can reduce breeding success and survival. At sea, fisheries, pollution, marine infrastructure and disturbance can cause direct mortality, alter habitats and affect food availability. Climate change can further intensify these pressures through changes in oceanographic conditions and food webs, as well as direct effects such as habitat alteration and extreme weather events. These threats can interact across time and space, affecting different phases of the annual cycle and spanning distant marine and terrestrial environments. Understanding their cumulative impacts is therefore a priority for assessing seabird vulnerability and developing effective conservation strategies.Assessing the impacts of multiple threats on seabirds remains challenging because pressures may act simultaneously or sequentially, across different environments and periods of the annual cycle. This Research Topic aims to unveil emerging and overlooked threats, particularly those occurring during poorly studied non-breeding periods and, for migratory species, in geographically distant areas. Particular attention will be given to interactions among threats and to carry-over effects, through which exposure or impacts experienced during one stage of the annual cycle may affect individuals at subsequent stages. Studies combining complementary approaches are particularly encouraged, including field studies, biologging, remote sensing, and ecotoxicological, physiological and demographic tools, to link patterns of exposure with their consequences. By integrating information across spatial and temporal scales, this Research Topic seeks to improve our understanding of when, where and how seabirds are most at risk and provide a stronger basis for assessing vulnerability and informing conservation actions.We encourage research, review and methodological articles addressing threats to seabirds and their conservation across life stages, environments and phases of the annual cycle. Contributions integrating complementary approaches and assessing emerging or overlooked threats are particularly welcome.Topics of interest include:- Multiple threats at breeding sites, their cumulative impacts and interactions, and the integration of ecological and social dimensions into conservation planning- Threats in the marine environment across spatial scales, from foraging areas and non-breeding grounds to migratory routes, including single- and multi-species assessments at the flyway scale- Seabird–fishery interactions, including bycatch, fisheries-derived food subsidies and mitigation measures- Human-induced pressures at sea, including marine infrastructure, plastics, chemical and light pollution, and emerging contaminants- Population vulnerability and conservation using demographic, genomic and innovative monitoring approaches- Climate change and extreme weather events, including ecosystem disruption, changes in distribution and phenology, breeding failure and mass-mortality events Topic editors: Georgios Karris, Johannes Foufopoulos, Letizia Campioni Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86279/threats-to-seabirds-across-the-annual-cycle-from-breeding-colonies-to-pelagic-ecosystems