Familiarity with other females,
geography may be crucial for reproduction
Date: June 7, 2017
Source: PLOS
Female Steller sea lions tend to
breed at or near the rookery where they were born, according to a study
published June 7, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kelly Hastings
from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, USA, and colleagues.
Understanding the patterns of
dispersal for an animal species is critical for measuring changes in the
population, which helps with conservation efforts. Previous studies have shown
that Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus)
males tend to disperse more frequently than the females, however, little is
known about the movements of breeding females.
The authors of the present study
monitored 369 Steller sea lion females that had been marked as pups in the
rookeries where they were born in southeastern Alaska, gathering observation
and recapture data between 2001 and 2015 to assess how frequently breeding
females switched rookery.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!