Dear MARMAM colleagues,
We are pleased to announce that the following paper is now available online::
Enrico Pirotta, Lisa K. Schwarz, Daniel P. Costa, Patrick W. Robinson, and
Leslie New (2019). Modeling the functional link between movement, feeding
activity, and condition in a marine predator. Behavioral Ecology.
Abstract:
The ability to quantify animals’ feeding activity and the resulting changes in
their body condition as they move in the environment is fundamental to our
understanding of a population’s ecology. We use satellite tracking data from
northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), paired with simultaneous
diving information, to develop a Bayesian state-space model that concurrently
estimates an individual’s location, feeding activity, and changes in condition.
The model identifies important foraging areas and times, the relative amount of
feeding occurring therein, and thus the different behavioral strategies in
which the seals engage. The fitness implications of these strategies can be
assessed by looking at the resulting variation in individuals’ condition, which
in turn affects the condition and survival of their offspring. Therefore, our
results shed light on the processes affecting an individual’s decision-making
as it moves and feeds in the environment. In addition, we demonstrate how the
model can be used to simulate realistic patterns of disturbance at different
stages of the trip, and how the predicted accumulation of lipid reserves varies
as a consequence. Particularly, disturbing an animal in periods of high feeding
activity or shortly after leaving the colony was predicted to have the
potential to lead to starvation. In contrast, an individual could compensate
even for very severe disturbance if such disturbance occurred outside the main
foraging grounds. Our modeling approach is applicable to marine mammal species
that perform drift dives and can be extended to other species where an
individual’s buoyancy can be inferred from its diving behavior..
A PDF copy of the paper can be downloaded from:
https://academic.oup.com/beheco/advance-article/doi/10.1093/beheco/ary183/5262697
Please do not hesitate to contact me for any question regarding our work.
Best Regards, and Happy New Year!
Enrico Pirotta
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