Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) have been integral to the development and progress of biologging technology and movement data analysis, which continue to improve our understanding of this and other species. Adult female elephant seals at Año Nuevo Reserve and other colonies along the west coast of North America were tracked annually from 2004 to 2020, resulting in a total of 653 instrument deployments. This paper outlines the compilation and curation process of these high-resolution diving and location data, now accessible in two Dryad repositories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe field of marine mammal conservation has dramatically benefited from the rapid advancement of methods to assess the reproductive physiology of individuals and populations from steroid hormones isolated from minimally invasive skin-blubber biopsy samples. Historically, this vital information was only available from complete anatomical and physiological investigations of samples collected during commercial or indigenous whaling. Humpback whales () are a migratory, cosmopolitan species that reproduce in warm, low-latitude breeding grounds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol
July 2024
Despite elite human free divers achieving incredible feats in competitive free diving, there has yet to be a study that compares consummate divers, (i.e. northern elephant seals) to highly conditioned free divers (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRapid Commun Mass Spectrom
June 2024
Migration patterns are fundamentally linked to the spatio-temporal distributions of prey. How migrating animals can respond to changes in their prey's distribution and abundance remains largely unclear. During the last decade, humpback whales () used specific winter foraging sites in fjords of northern Norway, outside of their main summer foraging season, to feed on herring that started overwintering in the area.
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