Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Charadriiformes > Laridae > Larus > Larus occidentalis

Larus occidentalis (Western Gull)

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Wikipedia Abstract

The western gull (Larus occidentalis) is a large white-headed gull that lives on the west coast of North America. It was previously considered conspecific with the yellow-footed gull (Larus livens) of the Gulf of California. The western gull ranges from British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico, and, because of its convenient colonies on the coast of California, it is well studied. Despite being a well-known bird species on the West Coast of the US, it is of some slight conservation concern given its restricted range (for a gull).
View Wikipedia Record: Larus occidentalis

Infraspecies

Larus occidentalis occidentalis (Western gull) (Attributes)
Larus occidentalis wymani (Western gull) (Attributes)

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
0
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
2
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 1.54124
EDGE Score: 0.932654
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  1.989 lbs (902 g)
Birth Weight [3]  68 grams
Female Weight [1]  1.784 lbs (809 g)
Male Weight [1]  2.194 lbs (995 g)
Weight Dimorphism [1]  23 %
Breeding Habitat [2]  Coastal cliffs and islands, Coastal marine
Wintering Geography [2]  Pacific Coast
Wintering Habitat [2]  Beaches and estuaries, Coastal marine
Diet [4]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore
Diet - Endothermic [4]  30 %
Diet - Fish [4]  30 %
Diet - Invertibrates [4]  20 %
Diet - Scavenger [4]  20 %
Forages - Ground [4]  80 %
Forages - Water Surface [4]  20 %
Clutch Size [3]  3
Clutches / Year [3]  1
Fledging [1]  50 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [2]  78,000
Incubation [3]  27 days
Maximum Longevity [3]  28 years
Wing Span [5]  4.494 feet (1.37 m)
Female Maturity [3]  5 years
Male Maturity [3]  4 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Falco peregrinus (Peregrine Falcon)[9]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Nathan 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
♦ 2Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 3de 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
♦ 4Hamish 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
♦ 5del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 6Lafferty, K. D., R. F. Hechinger, J. C. Shaw, K. L. Whitney and A. M. Kuris (in press) Food webs and parasites in a salt marsh ecosystem. In Disease ecology: community structure and pathogen dynamics (eds S. Collinge and C. Ray). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
♦ 7Szoboszlai AI, Thayer JA, Wood SA, Sydeman WJ, Koehn LE (2015) Forage species in predator diets: synthesis of data from the California Current. Ecological Informatics 29(1): 45-56. Szoboszlai AI, Thayer JA, Wood SA, Sydeman WJ, Koehn LE (2015) Data from: Forage species in predator diets: synthesis of data from the California Current. Dryad Digital Repository.
♦ 8Food Web Relationships of Northern Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca : a Synthesis of the Available Knowledge, Charles A. Simenstad, Bruce S. Miller, Carl F. Nyblade, Kathleen Thornburgh, and Lewis J. Bledsoe, EPA-600 7-29-259 September 1979
♦ 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.
♦ 10Trophic Role of the Pacific Whiting, Merluccius productus, P. A. LIVINGSTON and K. M. BAILEY, Marine Fisheries Review 47(2), 1985, p. 16-22
♦ 11Myotis vivesi, Brad R. Blood and Mary K. Clark, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 588, pp. 1-5 (1998)
♦ 12Keitt, B.S., Tershy, B.R. & Croll, D.A. 2000. Black-vented Shearwater (Puffinus opisthomelas) In: Poole, A. & Gill, F. (Eds). The birds of North America. No. 521. Philadelphia & Washington, DC: Academy of Natural Sciences & the American Ornithologists’ Union.
♦ 13International Flea Database
♦ 14Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
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