Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Suliformes > Sulidae > Morus > Morus bassanus

Morus bassanus (Northern Gannet)

Synonyms: Pelecanus bassanus (homotypic); Sula alba; Sula bassana; Sula bassana bassana; Sula bassanus
Language: French; Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The Northern gannet (Morus bassanus) is a seabird and the largest member of the gannet family, Sulidae. "Gannet" is derived from Old English ganot "strong or masculine", ultimately from the same Old Germanic root as "gander". Morus is derived from Ancient Greek moros, "foolish" due to the lack of fear shown by breeding gannets and boobies allowing them to be easily killed. The specific bassanus is from the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, which holds the world's largest colony of northern gannets. Old names for the northern gannet include solan and solan goose.
View Wikipedia Record: Morus bassanus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
6
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
29
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 13.3345
EDGE Score: 2.66267
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [4]  1
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Egg Length [6]  3.11 inches (79 mm)
Egg Width [6]  1.968 inches (50 mm)
Fledging [6]  90 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  720,000
Incubation [4]  43 days
Maximum Longevity [4]  37 years
Migration [1]  Interoceanic
Speed [7]  62.12 MPH (27.77 m/s)
Water Biome [1]  Coastal
Wing Span [8]  5.642 feet (1.72 m)
Adult Weight [2]  6.612 lbs (2.999 kg)
Birth Weight [4]  80 grams
Breeding Habitat [3]  Coastal cliffs and islands, Coastal marine
Wintering Geography [3]  Atlantic Ocean
Wintering Habitat [3]  Coastal marine, Pelagic
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Fish [5]  90 %
Diet - Scavenger [5]  10 %
Forages - Underwater [5]  100 %
Female Maturity [4]  2 years
Male Maturity [4]  3 years

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Celtic broadleaf forests Ireland, United Kingdom Palearctic Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests  
North Atlantic moist mixed forests Ireland, United Kingdom Palearctic Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests
Scandinavian Montane Birch forest and grasslands Norway, Sweden, Finland Palearctic Tundra

Protected Areas

Important Bird Areas

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Larus argentatus (Herring Gull)[12]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Bursacetabulus morus[13]
Bursatintinnabulus bassanus[13]
Ceratophyllus borealis[14]
Galactosomum cochleariforme[13]

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Storchová, Lenka; Hořák, David (2018), Data from: Life-history characteristics of European birds, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n6k3n
♦ 3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 6Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 7Alerstam T, Rosén M, Bäckman J, Ericson PGP, Hellgren O (2007) Flight Speeds among Bird Species: Allometric and Phylogenetic Effects. PLoS Biol 5(8): e197. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050197
♦ 8British Trust for Ornithology
♦ 9Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 10Annual variation in diets, feeding locations and foraging behaviour of gannets in the North Sea: flexibility, consistency and constraint, K. C. Hamer, E. M. Humphreys, S. Garthe, J. Hennicke, G. Peters, D. Grémillet, R. A. Phillips, M. P. Harris, S. Wanless, Mar Ecol Prog Ser 338: 295–305, 2007
♦ 11Flight destinations and foraging behaviour of northern gannets (Sula bassana) preying on a small forage fish in a low-Arctic ecosystem, Stefan Garthea, William A. Montevecchi, Gail K. Davoren, Deep-Sea Research II 54 (2007) 311–320
♦ 12Diets of adult and chick Herring Gulls Larus argentatus argenteus on Ailsa Craig, south-west Scotland., M. Nogales, B. Zonfrillo and P. Monaghan, SEABIRD 17: 56-63
♦ 13Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
♦ 14International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0