This is page 1 Printer: Opaque this Elephant Seal Movements: Dive Types and Their Sequences

• Main Authors: David R. Brillinger, Brent S. Stewart
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Elephant Seal
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.637.7644; http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~brill/Papers/nantucket.pdf

This paper is concerned with time-depth curves recorded for northern ele-phant seals that are migrating. The curves show a succession of dives of varying depths, durations and types. A mixture model is employed to esti-mate the various curves present. An advantage of this procedure, over the ones that have been employed, is that it is automatic. Further a categorical-valued series is developed for the sequence of dives. It is examined for ev-idence of independence for both dives of one type and amongst dives of dierent types. Key words and phrases: Categorical-valued time series, dive patterns, ele-phant seals, foraging behavior, longitudinal data; mixture model. AMS 1991 subject classications: Primary 62M10; 62M15; 62P10. 1