Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals.

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.

Individual variation in life-history timing: synchronous presence, asynchronous events and phenological compensation in a wild mammal.

Many animals and plants have species-typical annual cycles, but individuals vary in their timing of life-history events. Individual variation in fur replacement (moult) timing is poorly understood in mammals due to the challenge of repeated observations and longitudinal sampling. We examined factors that influence variation in moult duration and timing among elephant seals ().

Foraging behavior and age affect maternal transfer of mercury to northern elephant seal pups.

Deep ocean foraging northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) consume fish and squid in remote depths of the North Pacific Ocean. Contaminants bioaccumulated from prey are subsequently transferred by adult females to pups during gestation and lactation, linking pups to mercury contamination in mesopelagic food webs (200-1000 m depths). Maternal transfer of mercury to developing seal pups was related to maternal mercury contamination and was strongly correlated with maternal foraging behavior (biotelemetry and isotopes).

Impacts of marine heatwaves on top predator distributions are variable but predictable.

Marine heatwaves cause widespread environmental, biological, and socio-economic impacts, placing them at the forefront of 21st-century management challenges. However, heatwaves vary in intensity and evolution, and a paucity of information on how this variability impacts marine species limits our ability to proactively manage for these extreme events. Here, we model the effects of four recent heatwaves (2014, 2015, 2019, 2020) in the Northeastern Pacific on the distributions of 14 top predator species of ecological, cultural, and commercial importance.