Female albatrosses shack up

Common wild thing
Same sex couples are common in the wild. According to University of Oslo zoologist Petter Böckman, roughly 1,500 animal species are known to practice same-sex coupling, including bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls, salmon and many others.

This same-sex strategy may explain why Laysan albatrosses are successful at re-colonizing islands. Pairs of parents are essential to the survival of young albatrosses — one parent stays at home to incubate eggs and guard offspring, while the other flies and gets food.

"Although they nest in Hawaii, they forage near Alaska, up to thousands of miles away," Young said. "That's where their feeding grounds are — the cooler water tends to be more productive, and they go for small fish and a lot of squid."

This is the first time female–female pairing has been seen in albatrosses. But Young suspects they are far from unique. "A lot of albatrosses have been seen with two eggs in nests," she said. "And not just albatrosses, but other seabirds as well. This may be a lot more common than we realized, so the race is on to find out."

The same-sex situation seen at this one Laysan albatross colony might not extrapolate to the species as a whole, Young said.

"We're looking at a new colony that's trying to adjust to the availability of a certain sex, or lack thereof," she explained. "We want to compare multiple sites to figure out what kinds of forces are driving this behavior."

"The species as a whole is probably flexible in terms of mating strategies," Young added. "It's just that in other places, it may not be as prevalent."

Young and her colleagues Brenda Zaun and Eric VanderWerf detailed their findings online May 28 in the journal Biology Letters. They were funded by the Kilauea Point Natural History Association and the University of Hawaii Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology program research award through a National Science Foundation grant.

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