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Pup mortality in a rapidly declining harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) population

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Hanson.pone.0080727.pdf (407.9Kb)
Date
27/11/2013
Author
Hanson, Nora Nell
Thompson, David
Duck, Callan David
Moss, Simon
Lonergan, Mike
Keywords
Confidence intervals
Death rates
Fecundity
Population dynamics
Probability distribution
Scotland
Seals
Wildlife
QL Zoology
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Abstract
The harbour seal population in Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, has reduced by 65% between 2001 and 2010. The cause(s) of this decline are unknown but must affect the demographic parameters of the population. Here, satellite telemetry data were used to test the hypothesis that increased pup mortality could be a primary driver of the decline in Orkney. Pup mortality and tag failure parameters were estimated from the duration of operation of atellite tags deployed on harbour seal pups from the Orkney population (n = 4) and from another population on the west coast of Scotland (n = 24) where abundance was stable. Survival probabilities from both populations were best represented by a common gamma distribution and were not different from one another, suggesting that increased pup mortality is unlikely to be the primary agent in the Orkney population decline. The estimated probability of surviving to 6 months was 0.390 (95% CI 0.297 – 0.648) and tag failure was represented by a Gaussian distribution, with estimated mean 270 (95% CI = 198 – 288) and s.d. 21 (95% CI = 1 – 66) days. These results suggest that adult survival is the most likely proximate cause of the decline. They also demonstrate a novel technique for attaining age-specific mortality rates from telemetry data.
Citation
Hanson , N N , Thompson , D , Duck , C D , Moss , S & Lonergan , M 2013 , ' Pup mortality in a rapidly declining harbour seal ( Phoca vitulina ) population ' , PLoS One , vol. 8 , no. 11 , e80727 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080727
Publication
PLoS One
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080727
ISSN
1932-6203
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2013 Hanson et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
This research was funded by the Scottish Government (www.scotland.gov.uk), Scottish Natural Heritage (www.snh.gov.uk) and the Natural Environment Research Council (www.nerc.ac.uk). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/4451

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