New Research Explores the Behavior of Female Northern Fur Seals During Lactation

Published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, this paper explores the behavior of female northern fur seals during lactation using Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP). The approach in this paper balances hypothetical and real-world applications allowing scientists to assess the model performance in relation to fur seal behavior while exploring questions about future behavior and responses to shifting environmental factors, such as prey species range shifts. Key findings include:

• Interactions between prey availability and quality influence foraging trip durations and pup wean mass.
• A rookery is unlikely to be viable if a female fur seal must consistently travel 400km or more to reach primary foraging grounds.
• To achieve pup growth rates characteristic of a population experiencing rapid growth, primary foraging grounds should be less than 150km from the rookery.
• Hypothetical reductions in pup metabolic rates allowed for successful reproduction even when females had to travel long distances to reach foraging grounds

These results are important as conservation and fisheries managers work to better understand the relationship between northern fur seals, walleye pollock, and responses to climate change. Further, the ability of this model to produce behavior and behavioral responses to prey consistent with northern fur seals and other otariids indicate that it is transferable to other applications and systems.

Read the full paper here.

Reference

• McHuron, E.A., Sterling, J.T., Mangel, M. (2023) The influence of prey availability on behavioral decisions and reproductive success of a central-place forager during lactation. Journal of Theoretical Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111392