Animal-borne sensors for studying foraging and habitat use of marine predators in the Southern Ocean

用于研究南大洋海洋捕食者的觅食和栖息地利用的动物传感器

• 批准号: 2423017
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of St Andrews
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2016 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2423017
• 关键词: Animal; borne; sensors; studying; foraging

Efficient foraging is critical for central place foragers such as seals and seabirds that provision pups/chicks on land via prey caught at sea. In the Southern Ocean, these species rely on energy rich food patches that also attract top-level predators, many of which use sound to communicate and find prey. The acoustic environment, and in particular underwater vocalizations from whales, seals and perhaps even penguins, may provide abundant cues to guide krill eaters in searching for patches while avoiding their predators and competitors. However, little is known about how marine animals harness this sonic information nor is it known whether noise from shipping and industrial activities may disrupt sound-based foraging. This project will use and further develop cutting-edge tag technology to quantify the sounds produced, and the soundscapes experienced, by individual animals along with their fine-scale behaviour over periods of weeks. The miniature tags record the sounds made and heard by animals along with their position (GPS) and fine-scale body movements (accelerometers) over periods of weeks. A high frequency sonar will also be incorporated to assess prey patch density. Tags will be deployed on seals and penguins over multiple foraging trips to study how soundscapes and biotic environment influence searching behaviour, foraging success and therefore offspring growth. This PhD project will require the student to be involved in all aspects of the research including sensor design and calibration, experiment design and field deployments, and data analysis and interpretation. Given the large complex datasets collected, the student will develop computationally efficient analysis tools along with new inferential methods integrating multiple sensor streams. Methods will be developed to describe sound fields, vocalization rates, locomotion effort, and to quantify prey encounter rates and time spent foraging. With this unique combination of data, the student will study how animals locate and exploit ephemeral prey patches and transfer these resources to offspring on land, relating this to descriptors of the soundscapes encountered and observations of pup/chick growth. Methods will be evaluated first on captive animals and potential tag effects will be monitored in the field by comparison with control groups of animals radio-tracked with smaller tags. Subject to funding, tags will be deployed on animals breeding on South Georgia or other sub-Antarctic islands.

有效的觅食对于海豹和海鸟等中央觅食动物至关重要，它们通过在海上捕获的猎物在陆地上提供幼仔/幼鸟。在南大洋，这些物种依赖于能量丰富的食物斑块，这些食物斑块也吸引了顶级掠食者，其中许多掠食者使用声音进行交流和寻找猎物。声学环境，特别是来自鲸鱼、海豹甚至企鹅的水下发声，可能提供丰富的线索来指导磷虾捕食者寻找补丁，同时避免捕食者和竞争对手。然而，人们对海洋动物如何利用这种声音信息知之甚少，也不知道航运和工业活动的噪音是否会破坏基于声音的觅食。该项目将使用并进一步开发尖端的标签技术，以量化单个动物沿着数周内的精细行为所产生的声音和所经历的音景。这些微型标签记录了动物沿着发出和听到的声音，以及它们在数周内的位置（GPS）和精细的身体运动（加速度计）。一个高频声纳也将被纳入评估猎物补丁密度。标签将部署在海豹和企鹅多次觅食之旅，以研究音景和生物环境如何影响搜索行为，觅食成功，从而后代的成长。这个博士项目将要求学生参与研究的各个方面，包括传感器设计和校准，实验设计和现场部署，以及数据分析和解释。考虑到收集的大型复杂数据集，学生将开发计算效率高的分析工具，沿着集成多个传感器流的新推理方法。方法将被开发来描述声场，发声率，运动的努力，并量化猎物遇到率和时间花费觅食。通过这种独特的数据组合，学生将研究动物如何定位和利用短暂的猎物补丁，并将这些资源转移到陆地上的后代，将其与所遇到的音景描述符和幼鸟/幼鸟生长的观察结果联系起来。方法将首先在圈养动物上进行评估，并通过与使用较小标签进行无线电跟踪的动物对照组进行比较，在现场监测潜在的标签效应。根据资金情况，标签将部署在南格鲁吉亚或其他亚南极岛屿上繁殖的动物上。