4 5 6 7

• Main Authors: Anne-cécile Dragon, Avner Bar-hen, Pascal Monestiez
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: 2 32; Elephant Seal; Southern Elephant Seal
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.393.3059; http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/65/95/80/PDF/Dragon_MEPS.pdf

With technical advances in wildlife telemetry, the study of cryptic predators ’ responses to prey distribution has been revolutionised. Considering marine predators, high resolution tagging devices were developed lately to collect long and precise diving datasets. In this study, we investigated, at fine temporal and spatial scales, changes in the horizontal movements and diving patterns of a marine predator, the southern elephant seal. Satellite tracking data collected on nine seals were processed with switching state-space models. Seals ’ body condition, as a proxy for foraging success, was estimated through changes in drift rate from Time Depth Recorder (TDR) data. We identified (1) statistically distinct behavioural modes along the