Basal Metabolic Rate and Energy Expenditure during Incubation in the Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans)

Metabolic rates of incubating and non-incubating adult Wandering Albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) were measured using the birds' rate of oxygen consumption. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) was 1,755 kJ day-1 for birds of mean mass 8,130 g. This is close to the BMR predicted for non-passerines of equivalent mass from allometric equations. Incubating female Wandering Albatrosses of mean mass 7,930 g expended 2,415 kJ day-1. This is 1.4 times BMR, and is also higher than previous estimates for incubating Wandering Albatrosses based on their rates of mass loss. These differences may be due in part to stresses imposed on the incubating birds during measurement of oxygen consumption, or to errors in estimating the amount of fat that the birds oxidized during their incubation fast, in studies where their energy expenditure was calculated from loss of mass.