Group foraging is observed in many species as a means to increase the ability of members of the group to find and exploit patchy prey. Group foraging can be exhibited in a number of different contexts based on the relationships between the participants, including by-product mutualism. One variant of by-product...
Overview:
In recent years, an increasing number of large whales have become entangled by crab trap lines off the U.S. Pacific coast. Wildlife managers are interested in knowing whether the whales are from threatened or endangered populations. In this lesson, students will learn how whale populations are defined, and how...
In 2014, Oregon State University (OSU) initiated a multi-year project to study humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrations in the North Pacific Ocean using satellite tracking technology in combination with genetic and photo-identification (photo-ID) analyses. The study is highly relevant to management, given the need for new information arising from the...
South Pacific humpback whales were devastated by commercial whaling in their Antarctic feeding areas during the 20th century. Understanding migratory connections and current abundance of these isolated breeding stocks is crucial for the allocation of historical Antarctic catches in population dynamic models used to assess current recovery. However, only a...
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are a widely distributed baleen whale species, well known for their diverse acoustic behavior. On high-latitude foraging grounds, humpback whales produce a suite of non-song vocalizations (“calls”) in concert with foraging and social behavior. In this dissertation I investigated the role of calls in the acoustic...
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are vocal baleen whales that exhibit complex social interactions that vary spatially and seasonally. Across their range, humpback whales produce a wide array of vocalizations including ‘song’, foraging vocalizations, and a range of vocalizations known as social calls -- unclassified non-song vocalizations. This study investigates the...
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae, Borowski 1781) in the North Pacific migrate from mid- to high- latitude summer feeding grounds along the Pacific Rim, including areas off the coasts of the U.S., Canada, Russia and eastern Asia, to tropical breeding grounds each winter along Pacific coasts of Mexico and Central America...
The North Pacific humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) population has been increasing at an average annual rate of ~6% since the early 1990s. In northern Southeast Alaska alone, there are now more whales than estimated for the entire North Pacific several decades ago. An understanding of how this growing population is...
The rapid decline of marine ecosystems worldwide and the failure of traditional single species management pushed for the development of ecosystem-based conservation measures such as marine protected areas (MPA) to slow the loss of marine biodiversity. One approach to MPA creation advocates targeting marine megafauna (e.g., marine mammals, seabirds, sharks,...