Aquarium of the Pacific

Aquarium Event

Crested Auklet Research

Tales of Tangerine-scented Seabirds

© Ian L. Jones

Julie returns each Crested Auklet to its natural environment after taking weight measurements and feather samples.

The Crested Auklet (Aethia cristatella) is an ornamented and highly social seabird with a seasonal tangerine-like odor. Crested auklet social and sexual displays involve pairs of birds that rub their faces in the scented nape of their partners. Join us for a lecture by ornithologist Dr. Julie Hagelin about the research she and her students have been doing on the olfactory aspects of the Crested Auklet.

Dr. Julie Hagelin and her graduate students at Swarthmore College study auklets on St. Lawrence Island in the Siberian Yup'ik village of Savoonga, just west of Nome, Alaska. Auklets breed there by the hundreds of thousands, enabling them to study the function of their fragrant odor, from mate selection to successful reproduction. Crested auklets nest in crevices deep underground. Hagelin and her students have studied the birds’ responses to odors using a special infrared "burrow" camera.

Hagelin and a couple of her students have also studied the colony of Crested Auklets that live at the Aquarium of the Pacific. By observing the Aquarium's 12 birds, they can carefully track the scent of individuals and understand how it relates to the social status over multiple years.

Hagelin is Assistant Professor at Swarthmore College in the Department of Biology, where she teaches animal behavior, behavioral ecology, and general biology. Previously she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

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© Ian L. Jones

One of the many bird cliffs on St. Lawrence Island.

© Ian L. Jones

Crested and Least Auklets arrive back at the colony at sunset.