Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals
Phenological shifts are among the most obvious biological responses to environmental change, yet documented responses for Southern Ocean marine mammals are extremely rare. Marine mammals can respond to environmental changes through phenological flexibility of their life-history events such as breedi...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8233432 2023-05-15T16:05:35+02:00 Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals de Kock, Leandri Oosthuizen, W. Chris Beltran, Roxanne S. Bester, Marthán N. de Bruyn, P. J. Nico 2021-06-25 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233432/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34172785 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233432/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34172785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Sci Rep Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 2021-07-11T00:24:13Z Phenological shifts are among the most obvious biological responses to environmental change, yet documented responses for Southern Ocean marine mammals are extremely rare. Marine mammals can respond to environmental changes through phenological flexibility of their life-history events such as breeding and moulting. Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) undergo an obligatory annual moult which involves the rapid shedding of epidermal skin and hair while seals fast ashore. We quantified the timing (phenology) and duration (the time from arrival ashore to departure) of the moult haulout of 4612 female elephant seals at Marion Island over 32 years. Using linear mixed-effects models, we investigated age, breeding state and environmental drivers of moult timing and haulout duration. We found no clear evidence for a temporal shift in moult phenology or its duration. Annual variation in moult arrival date and haulout duration was small relative to age and breeding effects, which explained more than 90% of the variance in moult arrival date and 25% in moult haulout duration. All environmental covariates we tested explained minimal variation in the data. Female elephant seals moulted progressively later as juveniles, but adults age 4 and older had similar moult start dates that depended on the breeding state of the female. In contrast, moult haulout duration was not constant with age among adults, but instead became shorter with increasing age. Moulting is energetically expensive and differences in the moult haulout duration are possibly due to individual variation in body mass and associated metabolizable energy reserves, although other drivers (e.g. hormones) may also be present. Individual-based data on moult arrival dates and haulout duration can be used as auxiliary data in demographic modelling and may be useful proxies of other important biological parameters such as body condition and breeding history. Text Elephant Seals Marion Island Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seals Southern Ocean PubMed Central (PMC) Southern Ocean Scientific Reports 11 1 |
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Article de Kock, Leandri Oosthuizen, W. Chris Beltran, Roxanne S. Bester, Marthán N. de Bruyn, P. J. Nico Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
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Phenological shifts are among the most obvious biological responses to environmental change, yet documented responses for Southern Ocean marine mammals are extremely rare. Marine mammals can respond to environmental changes through phenological flexibility of their life-history events such as breeding and moulting. Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) undergo an obligatory annual moult which involves the rapid shedding of epidermal skin and hair while seals fast ashore. We quantified the timing (phenology) and duration (the time from arrival ashore to departure) of the moult haulout of 4612 female elephant seals at Marion Island over 32 years. Using linear mixed-effects models, we investigated age, breeding state and environmental drivers of moult timing and haulout duration. We found no clear evidence for a temporal shift in moult phenology or its duration. Annual variation in moult arrival date and haulout duration was small relative to age and breeding effects, which explained more than 90% of the variance in moult arrival date and 25% in moult haulout duration. All environmental covariates we tested explained minimal variation in the data. Female elephant seals moulted progressively later as juveniles, but adults age 4 and older had similar moult start dates that depended on the breeding state of the female. In contrast, moult haulout duration was not constant with age among adults, but instead became shorter with increasing age. Moulting is energetically expensive and differences in the moult haulout duration are possibly due to individual variation in body mass and associated metabolizable energy reserves, although other drivers (e.g. hormones) may also be present. Individual-based data on moult arrival dates and haulout duration can be used as auxiliary data in demographic modelling and may be useful proxies of other important biological parameters such as body condition and breeding history. |
format |
Text |
author |
de Kock, Leandri Oosthuizen, W. Chris Beltran, Roxanne S. Bester, Marthán N. de Bruyn, P. J. Nico |
author_facet |
de Kock, Leandri Oosthuizen, W. Chris Beltran, Roxanne S. Bester, Marthán N. de Bruyn, P. J. Nico |
author_sort |
de Kock, Leandri |
title |
Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
title_short |
Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
title_full |
Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
title_fullStr |
Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
title_full_unstemmed |
Determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
title_sort |
determinants of moult haulout phenology and duration in southern elephant seals |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233432/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34172785 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 |
geographic |
Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Southern Ocean |
genre |
Elephant Seals Marion Island Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seals Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Elephant Seals Marion Island Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seals Southern Ocean |
op_source |
Sci Rep |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8233432/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34172785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92635-9 |
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Scientific Reports |
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