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• Main Authors: Brendan P. Kelly, Peter Boveng, Bradley R. Swanson
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Ringed seal; Phoca hispida; Arctic Ocean; population genetics; home range Citation; Arctic; ringed seal; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.330.6995; http://doc.nprb.org/web/05_prjs/515_Final_report.pdf

We monitored the movements of ringed seals using radio and ultra-sonic tags during the winter – spring period when the seals were occupying shorefast ice and using satellite-linked transmitters in summer and fall when the seals ranged away from their winter sites. In the shorefast ice habitat, the home ranges of 27 breeding males ranged from < 1 km 2 to 13.9 km 2 (X ¯ = 1.50 km 2, SD = 3.07) while the home ranges of 28 breeding females ranged from < 1 km 2 to 27.9 km 2 (X ¯ = 1.95 km 2, SD = 5.17). The 3-dimensional volumes used by 9 seals tracked acoustically under the ice ranged from 0.03 to 0.13 km 3 (X ¯ = 0.07, SD = 0.04) for subadults and breeding males and from 0.10 to 0.17 km 3 (X ¯ = 0.13, SD = 0.04) for breeding females. Three of the radio tracked seals and 9 tracked by satellite ranged up to 1800 km from their winter/spring home ranges in summer but returned to the same small sites during the ice-bound months in the following year. The restricted movements of ringed seals during the ice-bound season have implications for their foraging ecology, population structure, and conservation. We developed a new method of obtaining DNA samples from ice-associated seals. Skin cells shed on sea ice were a viable source of DNA for microsatellite analysis. This source of DNA should allow the rapid collection of a