My Research
I work with Dr. Brendon Dunphy on the ecophysiology of petrels and shearwaters. Our work looks at how seabird populations around the country cope with ocean-scale and local-scale environmental changes.
My PhD research looked at how we can monitor sublethal impacts of climate change on seabird populations – basically, how can we tell seabirds aren’t doing well before we start to see them dying in large numbers, or failing to breed. I’ve used a mix of physiological health indicators, dietary data, and GPS tracking to find out how four species of seabird have been coping with the recent marine heatwaves in northern Aotearoa.
My first chapter – a review of ecophysiological tools for seabird conservation, is Open Access here!
The other chapters are slowly making their way from thesis to publication….so watch this space.
Parts of my project received funding from the BirdsNZ Research Fund in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
Find my other publications here: Google Scholar Profile, ResearchGate
Northern New Zealand Seabird Trust
A small gallery of some of our recent field projects:
Master’s Research
My project investigated how different populations of ōi (Grey-faced petrels) respond to stress, and monitored the health of the birds through the breeding season. I also looked for age-related change in stress responses in a population of known-age ōi between 5 and 29 years old. A summary of my findings are available here, or you can contact me for published works.
Resources:
- Age-related physiological change in Grey-faced petrels (Conference poster)
- Whitehead, E. A., Russell, J. C., Hickey, A. J., Taylor, G. A., O’Reilly, K. M., Della Penna, A., & Dunphy, B. J. (2022). Seabird stress and breeding: Endocrine and hematological stress biomarkers differ between gray‐faced petrel (Pterodroma gouldi) colonies. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological and Integrative Physiology.