By

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Pacific; Yukon; Kuskokwim; Somateria mollissima; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.383.5184; http://www.arlis.org/docs/vol1/D/126846170.pdf

Knowledge of ecological factors that influence birth, death, immigration, and emigration provide insight into natural selection and population dynamics. Populations of Pacific common eiders (Somateria mollissima v-nigrum) on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (YKD) in western Alaska declined by 50-90 % from 1957 to 1992 and then stabilized at reduced numbers from the early 1990’s to the present. This study investigates the primary underlying processes affecting population dynamics of Pacific common eiders, with the goals of understanding factors that may have led to the observed decline and subsequent stabilization, and providing tools from which conservation, management, and recommendations for future research can be drawn. I examined variation in components of survival and reproduction in order to test hypotheses about the influence of specific ecological factors on life history variables and to investigate their relative contributions to local population dynamics. These analyses include data I collected from 2002 to 2004, in addition to historical data collected from 1991 to 2001. Apparent survival of adult females was high and relatively invariant, while