Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Carnivora. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Kodiak brown bears surf the salmon red wave: direct evidence from GPS collared individuals.; William Deacy, William Leacock, Jonathan B. Armstrong, Jack A. Stanford. Ecology, 2016; 97 (5): 1091 DOI: 10.1890/15-1060.1
Topic Started: Jun 2 2016, 04:35 PM (568 Views)
Taipan
Member Avatar
Administrator

Journal Reference:
William Deacy, William Leacock, Jonathan B. Armstrong, Jack A. Stanford. Kodiak brown bears surf the salmon red wave: direct evidence from GPS collared individuals. Ecology, 2016; 97 (5): 1091 DOI: 10.1890/15-1060.1

Abstract
A key constraint faced by consumers is achieving a positive energy balance in the face of temporal variation in foraging opportunities. Recent work has shown that spatial heterogeneity in resource phenology can buffer mobile consumers from this constraint by allowing them to track changes in resource availability across space. For example, salmon populations spawn asynchronously across watersheds, causing high-quality foraging opportunities to propagate across the landscape, prolonging the availability of salmon at the regional scale. However, we know little about how individual consumers integrate across phenological variation or the benefits they receive by doing so. Here, we present direct evidence that individual brown bears track spatial variation in salmon phenology. Data from 40 GPS collared brown bears show that bears visited multiple spawning sites in synchrony with the order of spawning phenology. The number of sites used was correlated with the number of days a bear exploited salmon, suggesting the phenological variation in the study area influenced bear access to salmon, a resource which strongly influences bear fitness. Fisheries managers attempting to maximize harvest while maintaining ecosystem function should strive to protect the population diversity that underlies the phenological variation used by wildlife consumers.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/15-1060.1/abstract;jsessionid=99815B4382BFEFB81A2B746A9CCD8D6B.f04t02
Attached to this post:
Attached File Kodiak_brown_bears_surf_the_salmon_red_wave__direct_evidence_from_GPS_collared_individuals.pdf (333.9 KB)
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Paper & PDF Share · Next Topic »
Add Reply