Dataset Information

A quantitative, hierarchical approach for detecting drift dives and tracking buoyancy changes in southern elephant seals.

ABSTRACT: Foraging behaviour of marine predators inferred from the analysis of horizontal or vertical movements commonly lack quantitative information about foraging success. Several marine mammal species are known to perform dives where they passively drift in the water column, termed "drift" dives. The drift rate is determined by the animal's buoyancy, which can be used to make inference regarding body condition. Long term dive records retrieved via satellite uplink are often summarized before transmission. This loss of resolution hampers identification of drift dives. Here, we develop a flexible, hierarchically structured approach to identify drift dives and estimate the drift rate from the summarized time-depth profiles that are increasingly available to the global research community. Based on high-resolution dive data from southern elephant seals, we classify dives as drift/non-drift and apply a summarization algorithm. We then (i) automatically generate dive groups based on inflection point ordering using a 'Reverse' Broken-Stick Algorithm, (ii) develop a set of threshold criteria to apply across groups, ensuring non-drift dives are most efficiently rejected, and (iii) finally implement a custom Kalman filter to retain the remaining dives that are within the seals estimated drifting time series. Validation with independent data sets shows our method retains approximately 3% of all dives, of which 88% are true drift dives. The drift rate estimates are unbiased, with the upper 95% quantile of the mean squared error between the daily averaged summarized profiles using our method (SDDR) and the observed daily averaged drift rate (ODDR) being only 0.0015. The trend of the drifting time-series match expectations for capital breeders, showing the lowest body condition commencing foraging trips and a progressive improvement as they remain at sea. Our method offers sufficient resolution to track small changes in body condition at a fine temporal scale. This approach overcomes a long-term challenge for large existing and ongoing data collections, with potential application across other drift diving species. Enabling robust identification of foraging success at sea offers a rare and valuable opportunity for monitoring marine ecosystem productivity in space and time by tracking the success of a top predator.

SUBMITTER: Arce F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6586652 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A quantitative, hierarchical approach for detecting drift dives and tracking buoyancy changes in southern elephant seals.

Arce Fernando F Bestley Sophie S Hindell Mark A MA McMahon Clive R CR Wotherspoon Simon S

Scientific reports 20190620 1

Foraging behaviour of marine predators inferred from the analysis of horizontal or vertical movements commonly lack quantitative information about foraging success. Several marine mammal species are known to perform dives where they passively drift in the water column, termed "drift" dives. The drift rate is determined by the animal's buoyancy, which can be used to make inference regarding body condition. Long term dive records retrieved via satellite uplink are often summarized before transmiss ...[more]

PMID: 31222003

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Project description:Southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) pups must strike a balance between conserving energy during their post-weaning fast and simultaneously developing diving abilities to attain nutritional independence. Little is known about environmental influences on cardiorespiratory patterns, hence energy use, throughout the 6 week fast. Continuous heart rates were recorded for free-ranging, newly weaned southern elephant seals using heart rate time-depth recorders for 5-9 days at Sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, during October 1994 (n = 1), 1995 (n = 4) and 1996 (n = 1). Daytime observations of respiration and behaviour were made throughout. We present the first instance of synchronous heart rate traces recorded simultaneously for individual weaners. Generalized additive models revealed that a sinusoidal pattern of diurnal heart rate elevation and nocturnal depression was evident in all seals and, on at least one occasion, a conspicuous break in this pattern coincided with an extreme cold weather event. Seals in this study were capable of considerable cardiorespiratory control and regularly demonstrated bradycardia during periods of resting apnoea. Apnoeic duration ranged from 33 to 291 s (mean 134 s). Apnoeic heart rates (mean 67 ± 15 beats min(-1), range 40-114 beats min(-1)) were on average 19.7% lower than those exhibited during periods of eupnoea (mean 83 ± 15 beats min(-1), range 44-124 beats min(-1)). The early development of the cardiorespiratory response is characterized by arrhythmic heart and respiration rates. The strong temporal patterns observed are being driven by the opposing requirements of maximizing time spent fasting in order to develop diving capabilities and of maximizing departure mass. This pilot study has highlighted a potentially large effect of ambient weather conditions on newly weaned southern elephant seal cardiorespiratory activity. Given the increasing westerlies and more erratic and increasing storminess associated with the Southern Annular Mode predicted in the Southern Ocean, the patterns observed here warrant further investigation.

Dataset Information

A quantitative, hierarchical approach for detecting drift dives and tracking buoyancy changes in southern elephant seals.

Publications

A quantitative, hierarchical approach for detecting drift dives and tracking buoyancy changes in southern elephant seals.

Similar Datasets

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