Identifying Environmental Determinants of Diurnal Distribution in Marine Birds and Mammals

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2006

Keywords

Akaike Information Criterion, Animal behavior, Differential equation model, Environmental forcing, Time-scale analysis

Abstract

Marine birds and mammals move between various habitats during the day as they engage in behaviors related to resting, sleeping, preening, feeding, and breeding. The per capita rates of movement between these habitats, and hence the habitat occupancy dynamics, often are functions of environmental variables such as tide height, solar elevation, wind speed, and temperature. If the system recovers rapidly after disturbance, differential equation models of occupancy dynamics can be reduced to algebraic equations on two time scales. Identification of environmental factors that influence movement between habitats requires time series census data collected in both the absence and presence of disturbance. © Society for Mathematical Biology 2006.

Journal Title

Bulletin of Mathematical Biology

Volume

68

Issue

2

First Page

467

Last Page

482

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-005-9009-0

First Department

Mathematics

Second Department

Biology

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