| Summary: | Progress Code: completed Statement: The values provided in temporal and spatial coverage are approximate only. Taken from the 2009-2010 Progress Report: Variations to work plan or objectives: No work is planned for the Casey region anymore due to logistical difficulties accessing the region. Field work: Field work was carried out at three locations that provided samples for this project: 1. Evans Head, northern NSW. 63 biopsies from humpback whales were taken. 2. The northern Ross Sea / Balleny Island region. ~ 60 biopsy samples were collected from humpback whales. 3. Macquarie Island - 1150 samples of scats collected for diverse predator species. Laboratory activity/analysis: The majority of our work is lab based. These activities have progressed very well. The Macquarie Island samples should be processed and analysed by the end of 2010 as will the humpback whale transcriptome analyses. Metadata record for data from AAS (ASAC) project 2926. Public Summary DNA based approaches will be used to study key features of the ecology of whales, penguins and krill. Standard methods cannot accurately estimate what prey species these predators consume, how old they are, or how they are related to the rest of their species. This project will apply novel DNA based methods to biopsy or scat samples as a non-invasive means of improving our understanding of the diet, age and population structure of these important predators. Project objectives: The overall objective of this project is to use molecular biology to study aspects of the ecology of key Southern Ocean predators that cannot be addressed with other methodologies. The organisms that the project would focus upon have been chosen because they are large biomass components of the Southern Ocean food web and because they are important to the Australian Governments commitments to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC). This project is integral to the work of the Australian Centre for ...
|
|---|