Priorities for Future Research

Most studies of Great Black-backed Gulls in North America have concentrated on nesting behavior and diet. Future research should emphasize Great Black-backed Gulls as a component of marine communities, focusing on the role of gulls in mixed-species foraging aggregations, as intertidal predators, and in offshore fisheries. Work in Europe has shown that Great Black-backed Gulls outcompete Herring Gulls for both fisheries waste and limited marine fish stocks. Good long-term population studies, both of colonies and marked individuals, are needed to learn whether similar factors are at work in New England and Canada. We also need to know if the Great Black-backed Gull is actually increasing in numbers, or is simply expanding its range southward in response to factors making northern parts of its range less suitable (e.g., the collapse of fish stocks or competition with Glaucous Gulls). Research into the plasticity of colonial situations would be enlightening to issues of the evolution of coloniality.

We need studies of vocalizations, including, but not limited to, individual variation, individual recognition, neighbor-stranger discrimination, parent-offspring recognition, dialects, and note morphology. Also needed are studies on nocturnal activity, sleep patterns, and general physiology, as well as studies on the identification of demographic parameters, winter ecology, migration, and the impacts of culling on recruitment and population dynamics.