Swimming depth and ocean currents affect transit costs in Steller sea lions Eumetopias jubatus

Hindle, Allyson G.; Rosen, David A. S.; Trites, Andrew W.

doi:10.3354/ab00279

Cited by 21 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…In comparison, transiting also involves high speed swimming, but it is usually done either at depths where drag is the lowest (i.e. at three body diameter depth, Williams ; Hindle, Rosen & Trites ), or by porpoising which increases locomotion efficiency (Boyd ). Slow surface movements also occur at the surface where drag is high, but movements are at lower velocity when drag is decreased (Costa & Williams ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accelerometers can measure total and activity‐specific energy expenditures in free‐ranging marine mammals only if linked to time‐activity budgets

et al. 2016

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Summary Energy expenditure is an important component of foraging ecology, but is extremely difficult to estimate in free‐ranging animals and depends on how animals partition their time between different activities during foraging. Acceleration data have emerged as a new way to determine energy expenditure at a fine scale but this needs to be tested and validated in wild animals. This study investigated whether vectorial dynamic body acceleration (VeDBA) could accurately predict the energy expended by marine predators during a full foraging trip. We also aimed to determine whether the accuracy of predictions of energy expenditure derived from acceleration increased when partitioned by different types of at‐sea activities (i.e. diving, transiting, resting and surface activities). To do so, we equipped 20 lactating northern (Callorhinus ursinus) and 20 lactating Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) with GPS, time‐depth recorders and tri‐axial accelerometers and obtained estimates of field metabolic rates using the doubly labelled water (DLW) method. VeDBA was derived from tri‐axial acceleration, and at‐sea activities (diving, transiting, resting and surface activities) were determined using dive depth, tri‐axial acceleration and travelling speed. We found that VeDBA did not accurately predict the total energy expended by fur seals during their full foraging trips (R2 = 0·36). However, the accuracy of VeDBA as a predictor of total energy expenditure increased significantly when foraging trips were partitioned by activity and when activity‐specific VeDBA was paired with time‐activity budgets (R2 = 0·70). Activity‐specific VeDBA also accurately predicted the energy expenditures of each activity independent of each other (R2 > 0·85). Our study confirms that acceleration is a promising way to estimate energy expenditures of free‐ranging marine mammals at a fine scale never attained before. However, it shows that it needs to be based on the time‐activity budgets that make up foraging trips rather than being derived as a single measure of VeDBA applied to entire foraging trips. Our activity‐based method provides a cost‐effective means to accurately calculate energy expenditures of fur seals using acceleration and time‐activity budgets, that can be transfered to studies on other species.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accelerometers can measure total and activity‐specific energy expenditures in free‐ranging marine mammals only if linked to time‐activity budgets

et al. 2016

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“…Accelerometer technology has dramatically advanced our understanding of the role of energy in behavioral strategies by making it possible to study fine-scale, behavior-specific energy expenditure outside the laboratory in diverse taxa [93]. Wilson and Halsey et al have tested for correlations between bodily acceleration and oxygen consumed (assuming at least predominantly aerobic metabolic pathways) across a wide range of species from aquatic mammals [94,95], birds [64,77,[96][97][98][99], fishes [100,101], reptiles [52,[102][103][104] and a bivalve [105], to terrestrial mammals, birds [56,[106][107][108] and one amphibian [109]. Although the strength of the relationship between bodily acceleration and oxygen consumption (as a proxy for metabolic rate) varies and depends on a number of factors, the relationship is valid across all species examined to date [110].…”

Section: Survey Of Questions Currently Served By Accelerometry: Biomementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A small minority of these studies (7), eschewed applications to metabolism and instead remained within the traditional realm of evaluating performance: running in racehorses [113][114][115][116][117], swimming in sea snakes [118], and flight in Procellariform sea birds [119]. The remaining 90% of articles focused on energy efficiency during locomotion for travel or foraging [31,35,94,[120][121][122][123][124]. In order to better understand the selection pressures on current patterns of locomotor behavior, researchers compared movement energetics across species, movement strategies, demographic classes and behaviors [42,48,102,107,[122][123][124][125][126][127].…”

Section: Survey Of Questions Currently Served By Accelerometry: Biomementioning

confidence: 99%

Observing the unwatchable through acceleration logging of animal behavior

et al. 2013

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Behavior is an important mechanism of evolution and it is paid for through energy expenditure. Nevertheless, field biologists can rarely observe animals for more than a fraction of their daily activities and attempts to quantify behavior for modeling ecological processes often exclude cryptic yet important behavioral events. Over the past few years, an explosion of research on remote monitoring of animal behavior using acceleration sensors has smashed the decades-old limits of observational studies. Animal-attached accelerometers measure the change in velocity of the body over time and can quantify fine-scale movements and body postures unlimited by visibility, observer bias, or the scale of space use. Pioneered more than a decade ago, application of accelerometers as a remote monitoring tool has recently surged thanks to the development of more accessible hardware and software. It has been applied to more than 120 species of animals to date. Accelerometer measurements are typically collected in three dimensions of movement at very high resolution (>10 Hz), and have so far been applied towards two main objectives. First, the patterns of accelerometer waveforms can be used to deduce specific behaviors through animal movement and body posture. Second, the variation in accelerometer waveform measurements has been shown to correlate with energy expenditure, opening up a suite of scientific questions in species notoriously difficult to observe in the wild. To date, studies of wild aquatic species outnumber wild terrestrial species and analyses of social behaviors are particularly few in number. Researchers of domestic and captive species also tend to report methodology more thoroughly than those studying species in the wild. There are substantial challenges to getting the most out of accelerometers, including validation, calibration, and the management and analysis of large quantities of data. In this review, we illustrate how accelerometers work, provide an overview of the ecological questions that have employed accelerometry, and highlight the emerging best practices for data acquisition and analysis. This tool offers a level of detail in behavioral studies of free-ranging wild animals that has previously been impossible to achieve and, across scientific disciplines, it improves understanding of the role of behavioral mechanisms in ecological and evolutionary processes. AbstractResumen: El comportamiento es un mecanismo importante de la evolución y que se paga a través del gasto de energía. Sin embargo, los biólogos de campo raramente observan los animales durante más de una fracción de sus actividades y los intentos de cuantificar el comportamiento para el modelado de los procesos ecológicos a menudo excluyen eventos crípticos pero importantes. En los últimos años se produjeron avances importantes en el monitoreo remoto del comportamiento de los animales, utilizando sensores de telemétro de aceleración (acelerómetros) que empujan los límites tradicionales de los estudios observacionales. Acelerómetros uni...

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“…Increased energetic costs of brooding trips could contribute to the decreases in reproductive success observed for both species during La Niñ a conditions. ENSO-driven wind patterns may also play a role in observed [23,41]). Our findings suggest that in addition to impacts on the productivity and location of foraging habitat (e.g.…”

Section: Cost Of Transport May Amplify Adverse Effects Of Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of El Niño-driven changes in wind patterns on North Pacific albatrosses

Thorne

Conners

Hazen

et al. 2016

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Changes to patterns of wind and ocean currents are tightly linked to climate change and have important implications for cost of travel and energy budgets in marine vertebrates. We evaluated how El Niñ o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-driven wind patterns affected breeding Laysan and blackfooted albatross across a decade of study. Owing to latitudinal variation in wind patterns, wind speed differed between habitat used during incubation and brooding; during La Niñ a conditions, wind speeds were lower in incubating Laysan (though not black-footed) albatross habitat, but higher in habitats used by brooding albatrosses. Incubating Laysan albatrosses benefited from increased wind speeds during El Niñ o conditions, showing increased travel speeds and mass gained during foraging trips. However, brooding albatrosses did not benefit from stronger winds during La Niñ a conditions, instead experiencing stronger cumulative headwinds and a smaller proportion of trips in tailwinds. Increased travel costs during brooding may contribute to the lower reproductive success observed in La Niñ a conditions. Furthermore, benefits of stronger winds in incubating habitat may explain the higher reproductive success of Laysan albatross during El Niñ o conditions. Our findings highlight the importance of considering habitat accessibility and cost of travel when evaluating the impacts of climate-driven habitat change on marine predators.

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Swimming depth and ocean currents affect transit costs in Steller sea lions Eumetopias jubatus

Cited by 21 publications

References 64 publications

Accelerometers can measure total and activity‐specific energy expenditures in free‐ranging marine mammals only if linked to time‐activity budgets

Accelerometers can measure total and activity‐specific energy expenditures in free‐ranging marine mammals only if linked to time‐activity budgets

Observing the unwatchable through acceleration logging of animal behavior

Effects of El Niño-driven changes in wind patterns on North Pacific albatrosses

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