Seabird Spread in the Sarasota Bay

Seabirds are marvels that exist all along Florida coasts. However, very little has been done to study how they are spread in the Sarasota Bay. The interactions between different species and how they are spread in the Sarasota Bay is very important for this ever-changing ecosystem. Having biodiversity of all species in the Bay is very important so that this ecosystem can survive and thrive. This Bay is consistently impacted by red tide, hurricanes, rip current, and many other climate disasters. Seeing how seabirds are impacted by these occurrences is important for measuring the biodiversity of the Bay. The spread of 6 seabird species (cormorant, brown pelican, anhinga, ibis, spoonbill, and osprey) were measured for 14 different test sites in the Sarasota Bay, while also taking into account other species that were observed. One boat trip was taken each month in June, July, and August to observe the 6 seabird species, and the others sighted, at the 14 different test sites. At these 14 test sites over the three months, the most observed bird species were gulls. The least observed species were spoonbills. The most observed species for the targeted species were cormorants. However, no bird species was statistically significantly above or below one another. Therefore, the biodiversity in the Sarasota Bay seems to be at healthy levels, even with the climate disasters that have occurred. Support was provided by Dr. Toro-Farmer, including funding for the boat trips and access to GIS software. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.