Like Wim, I am a bird watcher that happens to work on marine amphipods.
I suspect this is more of a coincidence than some bizarre tendency for
amphipod reserchers to also be interested in birds. One of the world's
foremost amphipod researchers, the late Jerry Barnard, however, was a
very keen birdwatcher and travelled extensively to see over 4000 of the
world's birds.
To answer Judy's question and bring the topic back to birds,
amphipods are most definitely consumed by birds. The most obvious
example are the waders foraging on mudflats and beaches. Their diet is
largely small crustaceans such as amphipods and polychaete worms.
Sandpipers are known to collect 10000 amphipods per day! This can lead
to some interesting ecology. In the Bay of Fundy, the arrival of large
numbers of migratory waders results in: 1) reduced amphipod numbers, 2)
increased numbers of their prey (tiny algae) and 3) more stable
sediments because the algae act to bind the sediments together.
In wet forests, there is no doubt that ground foraging birds such as
lyrebirds, thrushes etc would eat terrestrial amphipods. If you turn
over some leaf litter you will often see them hopping around (try this
in your garden if you live in the wetter parts of the country).
Alistair
--
Dr Alistair G. B. Poore
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New South Wales
Sydney, 2052
Australia
Phone: 61 2 9385 2154 Fax: 61 2 9385 1558
E-mail:
Web: www.bees.unsw.edu.au/staff/academic/poore/teaching.html
CRICOS Provider Code: 00098G
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