Animal telemetry is a powerful tool for observing marine animals and the physical environments that they inhabit, from coastal and continental shelf ecosystems to polar seas and open oceans. Satellite-linked biologgers and networks of acoustic receivers allow animals to be reliably monitored over scales of tens of meters to thousands of kilometers, giving insight into their habitat use, home range size, the phenology of migratory patterns and the biotic and abiotic factors that drive their distributions. Furthermore, physical environmental variables can be collected using animals as autonomous sampling platforms, increasing spatial and temporal coverage of global oceanographic observation systems. The use of animal telemetry, therefore, has the capacity to provide measures from a suite of essential ocean variables (EOVs) for improved monitoring of Earth's oceans. Here we outline the design features of animal telemetry systems, describe current applications and their benefits and challenges, and discuss future directions. We describe new analytical techniques that improve our ability to not only quantify animal movements but to also provide a powerful framework for comparative studies across taxa. We discuss the application of animal telemetry and its capacity to collect biotic and abiotic data, how the data collected can be incorporated into ocean observing systems, and the role these data can play in improved ocean management.
Ocean surface winds are an essential factor in understanding the physical interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean. Surface winds measured by satellite scatterometers and buoys cover most of the global ocean; however, there are still spatial and temporal gaps and finer-scale variations of wind that may be overlooked, particularly in coastal areas. Here, we show that flight paths of soaring seabirds can be used to estimate fine-scale (every 5 min, ∼5 km) ocean surface winds. Fine-scale global positioning system (GPS) positional data revealed that soaring seabirds flew tortuously and ground speed fluctuated presumably due to tail winds and head winds. Taking advantage of the ground speed difference in relation to flight direction, we reliably estimated wind speed and direction experienced by the birds. These birdbased wind velocities were significantly correlated with wind velocities estimated by satellite-borne scatterometers. Furthermore, extensive travel distances and flight duration of the seabirds enabled a wide range of high-resolution wind observations, especially in coastal areas. Our study suggests that seabirds provide a platform from which to measure ocean surface winds, potentially complementing conventional wind measurements by covering spatial and temporal measurement gaps.biologging | dynamic soaring | satellite scatterometer | GPS | meteorology R ecently, remote-sensing systems used to record atmospheric circulation have been developed. Satellite-borne scatterometers estimate ocean surface wind velocities each day covering the majority of the global ocean. These wide-range wind data in combination with refined ocean models are used in numerical weather predictions and describe the oceanographic features more accurately (1-3). Buoys scattered over the ocean also measure fine-time resolution in situ surface winds and are used in validating remote-sensing measurements and are assimilated into model analyses (4, 5). However, because wind data are only acquired twice per day by each satellite and buoys have limited spatial coverage, finer-scale changes of hours to days in local wind conditions could be overlooked. In addition, in coastal areas, where high biological productivity is associated with ocean and atmosphere circulation patterns (6), wind data are lacking due to variations in wind and wave caused by complex topographic effects that satellites have difficulty measuring (5,7,8). Obtaining in situ high-resolution atmospheric and oceanographic data to fill these spatial and temporal observation gaps would deepen our understanding of physical processes relevant to interactions between the atmosphere and ocean, contribute to improved atmospheric and ocean model analyses (7,8), and reveal detailed structure that remains unresolved by using conventional methods (9).The recent development of miniaturized animal-borne data loggers presented a capability to use animals as indicators of environmental variables. The extensive movement range and locomotion ability of marine mammals and seabirds ena...
Environmental contaminants and parasites are ubiquitous stressors that can affect animal physiology and derive from similar dietary sources (co-exposure). To unravel their interactions in wildlife, it is thus essential to quantify their concurring drivers. Here, the relationship between blood contaminant residues (11 trace elements and 17 perfluoroalkyl substances) and nonlethally quantified gastrointestinal parasite loads was tested while accounting for intrinsic (sex, age, and mass) and extrinsic factors (trophic ecology inferred from stable isotope analyses and biologging) in European shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis . Shags had high mercury (range 0.65–3.21 μg g –1 wet weight, ww) and extremely high perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA) residues (3.46–53 and 4.48–44 ng g –1 ww, respectively). Males had higher concentrations of arsenic, mercury, PFOA, and PFNA than females, while the opposite was true for selenium, perfluorododecanoic acid (PFDoA), and perfluooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). Individual parasite loads ( Contracaecum rudolphii ) were higher in males than in females. Females targeted pelagic-feeding prey, while males relied on both pelagic- and benthic-feeding organisms. Parasite loads were not related to trophic ecology in either sex, suggesting no substantial dietary co-exposure with contaminants. In females, parasite loads increased strongly with decreasing selenium:mercury molar ratios. Females may be more susceptible to the interactive effects of contaminants and parasites on physiology, with potential fitness consequences.
Aim In general, within temperate latitudes, races of endotherms tend to show larger body size at higher latitudes, while smaller bodied ones tend to be found at lower latitudes, a pattern known as Bergmann's rule (or James's rule for intra‐specific patterns). The adaptive basis of this geographical variation in body size is explained mostly by the heat conservation hypothesis. Application of Bergmann's rule has been confirmed mostly among terrestrial taxa and studies of marine taxa are rare. Our aim was to examine whether the intra‐specific variation in body size of a pelagic seabird species (streaked shearwater Calonectris leucomelas) follows Bergmann's/James's rule. Location Eight different breeding colonies of the streaked shearwater, ranging from 24–39° N in latitude (approximately the full latitudinal range of the species) and 123–142° E in longitude. Methods We measured morphological traits of 454 adult streaked shearwaters in total. Principal components analysis was used to create a composite body size index for each sex from each colony using the measured traits, and the value of first principal component was compared. The relationships between body size index and latitude, longitude and the averaged mean air temperature were examined using generalized linear models. Results Body size was positively correlated with latitude and longitude, and negatively correlated with the mean air temperature. Latitude and longitude were highly correlated with air temperature. Nonetheless, between colonies, populations that are considered to forage over large areas appeared to exhibit smaller body size than those of lower latitude populations. Main conclusion The overall trend of the geographical variations in body size of streaked shearwaters followed Bergmann's/James's rule, suggesting that this rule may be applicable to seabirds. However, in addition to thermoregulatory adaptation, intra‐specific differences in foraging characteristic in relation to local marine environment might also affect the body size in highly mobile seabirds.
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