Understanding animal movement and resource selection provides important information about the ecology of the animal, but an animal's movement and behavior are not typically constant in time. We present a velocity-based approach for modeling animal movement in space and time that allows for temporal heterogeneity in an animal's response to the environment, allows for temporal irregularity in telemetry data, and accounts for the uncertainty in the location information. Population-level inference on movement patterns and resource selection can then be made through cluster analysis of the parameters related to movement and behavior. We illustrate this approach through a study of northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus) movement in the Bering Sea, Alaska, USA. Results show sex differentiation, with female northern fur seals exhibiting stronger response to environmental variables.
Current flow and bathymetry in the Aleutian Islands define unique habitats that influence prey distribution and foraging behaviour of top-level predators. We explored whether oceanographic features and bathymetry influenced the diving activity of 30 immature sea lions (ages 5-21 months) equipped with satellitelinked depth recorders in the eastern Aleutian Islands (EAI) during 2000-02. Sea surface temperature (SST) and chlorophyll a concentrations were obtained from remote sensing satellite imagery and associated with locations where sea lion diving was recorded. Most locations associated with diving to >4 m were within 10 nautical miles (nm) of shore and associated with onshelf waters <100 m deep. Use of offshore and deeper waters in the Bering Sea increased during May, as did trip durations. General movements at that time were generally northwesterly from the North Pacific Ocean to the Bering Sea. Diving activity varied coincidently with increases in SST and chlorophyll a concentrations, but also with sea lion age. Associations with habitat features did not consistently explain variability in dive count, time at depth, dive focus or focal depth. Nearshore diving tended to be influenced by distance from shore or seafloor depth, whereas increased SST coincided with activity of sea lions diving >30 nm offshore. Immature sea lions developing into independent foragers in the relatively shallow pass areas of the EAI do so at a time of rapid changes in oceanography and prey availability.
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