Measurement of Individual and Population Energetics of Marine Mammals
Marine Mammal Ecology and Conservation / 08-Boyd-Ch08 page 165 7:55pm OUP CORRECTED PROOF – Finals, 5/7/2010, SPi 8 Measurement of individual and population energetics of marine mammals Sara J. Iverson, Carol E. Sparling, Terrie M. Williams, Shelley L.C. Lang, and W. Don Bowen 8.1 Introduction The overriding currency of all animal life is energy. Animals have evolved strategies of energy acquisition and use, but these strategies also experience tradeoffs between energy allocated to maintenance, activities, growth, and reproduction and are central to our understanding of life histories and fitness. Thus ‘energetics’— the study of the metabolic requirements, energy use, and output of animals— underpins many areas of physiology, ecology, evolutionary, and population biology, and even ecosystem dynamics. Marine mammals pose many challenges for the study, interpretation, and com- parison of individual and population energetics. For instance, the ability to study captive animals is often restricted to a few of the smaller marine mammal species. Although opportunities in the wild may be greater, there remain serious limits to our abilities to study species in remote locations (e.g. polar bears, Ursus maritimus,in the high arctic), in unstable habitats (e.g. ice-associated pinnipeds in the Bering and Chukchi Seas), or due to endangered status (e.g. monk seals, Monachus spp., southern sea otters, Enhydra lutris nereis, and vaquita, Phocoena sinus). As a group, cetaceans pose further difficulties because of their limited accessibility and large size. Adaptive insulation (blubber) is important in temperature management (Iverson 2009a) and the presence of this comparatively inert tissue can add complexity to the issue of defining the metabolically relevant body mass in marine mammals.
[Show full text]