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Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic

Habitat selection and spatial usage are important components of animal behavior influencing fitness and population dynamic. Understanding the animal–habitat relationship is crucial in ecology, particularly in developing strategies for wildlife management and conservation. As this relationship is gov...

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Autores principales: Huon, Mathilde, Planque, Yann, Jessopp, Mark John, Cronin, Michelle, Caurant, Florence, Vincent, Cécile
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8462179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34594504
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7934
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author Huon, Mathilde
Planque, Yann
Jessopp, Mark John
Cronin, Michelle
Caurant, Florence
Vincent, Cécile
author_facet Huon, Mathilde
Planque, Yann
Jessopp, Mark John
Cronin, Michelle
Caurant, Florence
Vincent, Cécile
author_sort Huon, Mathilde
collection PubMed
description Habitat selection and spatial usage are important components of animal behavior influencing fitness and population dynamic. Understanding the animal–habitat relationship is crucial in ecology, particularly in developing strategies for wildlife management and conservation. As this relationship is governed by environmental features and intra‐ and interspecific interactions, habitat selection of a population may vary locally between its core and edges. This is particularly true for central place foragers such as gray and harbor seals, where, in the Northeast Atlantic, the availability of habitat and prey around colonies vary at local scale. Here, we study how foraging habitat selection may vary locally under the influence of physical habitat features. Using GPS/GSM tags deployed at different gray and harbor seals’ colonies, we investigated spatial patterns and foraging habitat selection by comparing trip characteristics and home‐range similarities and fitting GAMMs to seal foraging locations and environmental data. To highlight the importance of modeling habitat selection at local scale, we fitted individual models to colonies as well as a global model. The global model suffered from issues of homogenization, while colony models showed that foraging habitat selection differed markedly between regions for both species. Despite being capable of undertaking far‐ranging trips, both gray and harbor seals selected their foraging habitat depending on local availability, mainly based on distance from the last haul‐out and bathymetry. Distance from shore and tidal current also influenced habitat preferences. Results suggest that local conditions have a strong influence on population spatial ecology, highlighting the relevance of processes occurring at fine geographical scale consistent with management within regional units.
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spelling pubmed-84621792021-09-29 Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic Huon, Mathilde Planque, Yann Jessopp, Mark John Cronin, Michelle Caurant, Florence Vincent, Cécile Ecol Evol Original Research Habitat selection and spatial usage are important components of animal behavior influencing fitness and population dynamic. Understanding the animal–habitat relationship is crucial in ecology, particularly in developing strategies for wildlife management and conservation. As this relationship is governed by environmental features and intra‐ and interspecific interactions, habitat selection of a population may vary locally between its core and edges. This is particularly true for central place foragers such as gray and harbor seals, where, in the Northeast Atlantic, the availability of habitat and prey around colonies vary at local scale. Here, we study how foraging habitat selection may vary locally under the influence of physical habitat features. Using GPS/GSM tags deployed at different gray and harbor seals’ colonies, we investigated spatial patterns and foraging habitat selection by comparing trip characteristics and home‐range similarities and fitting GAMMs to seal foraging locations and environmental data. To highlight the importance of modeling habitat selection at local scale, we fitted individual models to colonies as well as a global model. The global model suffered from issues of homogenization, while colony models showed that foraging habitat selection differed markedly between regions for both species. Despite being capable of undertaking far‐ranging trips, both gray and harbor seals selected their foraging habitat depending on local availability, mainly based on distance from the last haul‐out and bathymetry. Distance from shore and tidal current also influenced habitat preferences. Results suggest that local conditions have a strong influence on population spatial ecology, highlighting the relevance of processes occurring at fine geographical scale consistent with management within regional units. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-08-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8462179/ /pubmed/34594504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7934 Text en © 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Huon, Mathilde
Planque, Yann
Jessopp, Mark John
Cronin, Michelle
Caurant, Florence
Vincent, Cécile
Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title_full Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title_fullStr Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title_full_unstemmed Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title_short Fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the Northeast Atlantic
title_sort fine‐scale foraging habitat selection by two diving central place foragers in the northeast atlantic
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8462179/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34594504
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7934
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