Population Consequences of Acoustic Disturbance of Marine Mammals

• Main Author: Fleishman, Erica
• Other Authors: CALIFORNIA UNIV DAVIS JOHN MUIR INST OF THE ENVIRONMENT
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Biology; Anatomy and Physiology; Acoustics; *DOLPHINS(MAMMALS); *PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS; *REPRODUCTION(PHYSIOLOGY); *RESPONSE(BIOLOGY); *SEALS(MAMMALS); *SURVIVAL(GENERAL); *UNDERWATER SOUND; *WHALES; DEMOGRAPHY; FLORIDA; HABITATS; LIPIDS; MERCHANT VESSELS; TELEMETERING DATA; WATER TRAFFIC; *ACOUSTIC DISTURBANCES; *POPULATION-LEVEL EFFECTS; COMMERCIAL VESSEL TRAFFIC; SOUTHERN ELEPHANT SEALS; NORTHERN ELEPHANT SEALS; BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS; NORTHERN RIGHT WHALES; BEAKED WHALES; MARINE ANTHROPOGENIC SOUND; Elephant Seals; Southern Elephant Seals
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA601153; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA601153

The long-term goal of this project is to improve our understanding of how sound, or by extension any natural or anthropogenic disturbance, may affect the probabilities of population viability or species persistence of marine mammals. The behavior of an animal (e.g., direction or rate of movement) may change in response to one or more disturbances. Changes in behavior may affect life functions, such as feeding or breeding. Changes in life functions, in turn, affect vital rates such as recruitment or stage-specific survival. Vital rates affect the probabilities of population viability or species persistence. Functional relations between vital rates and probabilities of persistence are well established, but functional relations between behavior and life functions, and especially between life functions and vital rates, remain challenging to quantify. The specific objectives of this study are as follows: (1) explore how the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) committee's 2005 conceptual model of population-level effects of changes in the behavior of marine mammals might be translated into quantitative models; (2) consider how the NRC committee's conceptual model might be parameterized with existing or emerging data on the responses of large vertebrates to disturbance; (3) define conceptual approaches for investigating transfer functions (e.g., time-energy budgets, trait-mediated responses); (4) expand work by the NRC to include sensitivity analyses on transfer functions; and (5) outline exploratory models that might be used to model transfer functions, synthesize existing knowledge, examine potential mechanisms, or inform research and management.