Winter Foraging Locations Of Southern Ocean Predators In Relation To Stochastic Variation In Sea-Ice Extent

南极的海洋生物群落很可能是最早因气候变化而发生变化的地方之一。澳大利亚的一个首要国家优先事项是了解如果气候变化确实发生，南极社区将受到何种影响。由于食肉动物反映了食物链较低层次的变化，因此它们是一个值得研究的重要群体。这项研究将是第一个将冰的范围与捕食者的栖息地使用具体联系起来的研究，并量化了这一点如何随着时间的推移而变化。一些工作已经表明，由于冰的变化，南极洲的一些捕食者已经发生了群落水平的变化，因此需要开发工具来预测这些变化的性质和幅度。

Antarctic marine communities are likely to be amongst the first anywhere to show changes due to climate change. A top national priority for Australia is to understand how Antarctic communities will be affected if climate change does occur. As predators reflect changes occurring lower in the food chain, these are an important group to study. This study will be the first to specifically link ice extent with the habitat use of predators, and quantify how this varies over time. Some work already indicates that there have been community level changes in some predators in the Antarctic due to changes in ice extent, so developing tools to predict the nature and magnitude of these changes are needed.