The paper "provides a convincing argument for the Procellariiform seabirds as to why they might pick up plastic from the ocean," said Chris Wilcox, a senior research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia, who was not involved with the new study, in an emailed comment to The Washington Post.

Dimethyl sulphide as a foraging cue for Antarctic procellariiform seabirds.

Surface-feeding on cephalopods by Procellariiform seabirds in the Southern Benguela Region, South Africa.

La participacion relativa de los principales componentes en la dieta de los Procellariiformes (peces, cefalopodos y krill), puede variar con respecto a la disponibilidad de presas (Reid et al., 1997; Colabuono & Vooren, 2007), o la epoca del ano (Ainley et al., 1984), siendo los cefalopodos general-mente mas relevantes fuera de la temporada de reproduccion (Croxall & Prince, 1996).

Se han identificado cinco posibles fuentes de cefalopodos para los procellariiformes: 1) mortalidad cefalopodos post-desove, 2) calamares no reutilizados como carnada, 3) cefalopodos de migracion nictimeral, 4) regurgitacion de cetaceos, y 5) contenidos estomacales de peces eviscerados capturados por buques palangreros (Croxall & Prince, 1994; Vaske, 2011).

Electrophoresis study of blood proteins of some Procellariiform birds.

In the albatross group (order Procellariiformes) there is also an emphatic sweep through the scapulars during their sexual display ("scapular action," Marchant and Higgins 1990).

Key words: breeding effort, effect of age; Diomedea exulans; fitness; parental investment; Procellariiformes; provisioning behavior; sex differences in chick growth; survival to adult age, influence of growth.

Procellariiformes (petrels and albatrosses) have several life history traits that simplify the study of sex differences in parental investment in male or female offspring.

Observations of the flight trajectories and behavior of procellariiform birds over the open sea has shown that they approach sources of odor produced by slicks from downwind, presumably using their extremely well-developed olfactory systems (Nevitt, 1999).

Finally, DMS produced from DMSP sequestered at higher trophic levels may act as a chemoattractant for vertebrates such as procellariiform seabirds (Nevitt et al., 1995; Nevitt, 1998, 2000), helping them to locate food patches.

Dimethyl suiphide as a foraging cue for Antarctic Procellariiform seabirds.

Antarctic procellariiform seabirds forage over vast stretches of open ocean in search of patchily distributed prey resources.

My laboratory has been studying this problem in a novel context--olfactory foraging at sea by Antarctic procellariiform seabirds (Order Procellariiforms).

Tubenoses (Procellariiformes), in particular, seem to be prone to light attraction, although other taxa of seabirds and coastal birds that are primarily nocturnal at terrestrial nesting areas or are migrating at night also may be attracted in numbers (e.g., shorebirds, nocturnal alcids).