DOI: 10.5061/dryad.23td2
title: Data from: High flight costs, but low dive costs, in auks support the biomechanical hypothesis for flightlessness in penguins

description: Flight is a key adaptive trait. Despite its advantages, flight has been
 lost in several groups of birds, notably among seabirds, where
 flightlessness has evolved independently in at least five lineages. One
 hypothesis for the loss of flight among seabirds is that animals moving
 between different media face tradeoffs between maximizing function in one
 medium relative to the other. In particular, biomechanical models of
 energy costs during flying and diving suggest that a wing designed for
 optimal diving performance should lead to enormous energy costs when
 flying in air. Costs of flying and diving have been measured in
 free-living animals that use their wings to fly or to propel their dives,
 but not both. Animals that both fly and dive might approach the functional
 boundary between flight and nonflight. We show that flight costs for
 thick-billed murres (Uria lomvia), which are wing-propelled divers, and
 pelagic cormorants (Phalacrocorax pelagicus) (foot-propelled divers), are
 the highest recorded for vertebrates. Dive costs are high for cormorants
 and low for murres, but the latter are still higher than for flightless
 wing-propelled diving birds (penguins). For murres, flight costs were
 higher than predicted from biomechanical modeling, and the oxygen
 consumption rate during dives decreased with depth at a faster rate than
 estimated biomechanical costs. These results strongly support the
 hypothesis that function constrains form in diving birds, and that
 optimizing wing shape and form for wing-propelled diving leads to such
 high flight costs that flying ceases to be an option in larger
 wing-propelled diving seabirds, including penguins.
description: Doubly-labelled water
 data and energetics comparison used to generate figuresIncludes several
 worksheets: (1) "Background" are the background deuterium and
 oxygen-18 measuremetns from thick-billed mures in 2006. (2) "DEE
 calculations" provides the raw ppm data and calculations made to
 estimate daily enegy expenditure in thick-billed murres. Each band number
 (ID) can be cross-referenced with the time-activity file. (3)
 "Activity costs" represents the average body mass, mass loss and
 activity budgets and total energy expenditure (from Part (2)) used to
 calculate activity-specific costs. (4) "Interspecies comparison"
 data used to generate figures in the paper. (5) "Morphological
 comparison" database used to generate the figures in the paper. (6)
 "PECO ppm and DEE": Pelagic cormorant ppm data and calculations
 used to estimate daily energy expenditure. (7) "PECOactivity":
 Pelagic cormorant activity budgets (derived from accelerometer files) and
 daily energy expenditure (from 6), along with mass and mass loss (from
 6).Supplementary_Materials_Appendix1_PECO.xlsThick-billed murre text data files used to generate activity budgetsDive data files from Lotek 1100 time-depth recorders recorded at 3 second intervals. Each file name has the five- or eight-digit band number that corresponds to the doubly-labelled water measurements, except for those birds that were not banded and only identified by colour marked on their chest. One recorder was also attached to the top of the blind to record ambient temperature and pressure. Each text file has, after, a pre-amble, the date-time, depth (in psi; multiply by 0.71 to approximate depth in m) and temperature (in degrees Celsius).DLW.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 1a)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO1a.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 2)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO2.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 3)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO3.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 4)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO4.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 1b)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO1b.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 5a)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO5a.zipCEFAS G6A pelagic cormorant files (Part 5b)Text files downloaded from the accelerometers attached to pelagic cormorants (first of five folders). Each folder refers to one individual bird (cross-referenced with doubly-labelled water data). The file name within each folder refers to the CSV file created by the CEFAS program and has the logger ID and the date the file was created (downloaded). The data file provides date/time, depth (pressure in dbars which is generally equivalent to depth in m) and acceleration in three dimensions at 25 Hz (in g), after a preamble generated by the logger that includes the daylog. Note that data is partitioned into two sections. The first section has data every 1 s, the second section has data at 25 Hz in the "fast log"; for five files, the fine-scale (25 Hz) data was only recorded when the bird was diving. The CEFAS G6A manual is here: https://www.cefastechnology.co.uk/downloads/file.aspx?file=33.PECO5b.zip