Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to inform you of our publication in Marine Ecology
Progress Series, titled: Year-round passive acoustic data reveal
spatio-temporal patterns in marine mammal community composition in the
Weddell Sea, Antarctica. The article is published under open access and
can be found at: https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps_oa/m638p191.pdf.
The abstract can be found below.
Van Opzeeland I, Hillebrand H
Year-round passive acoustic data reveal spatio-temporal patterns in
marine mammal community composition in the Weddell Sea, Antarctica
MEPS 638:191-206
Best Regards,
Ilse Van Opzeeland
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ABSTRACT: To date, the majority of studies investigating marine mammal
distribution and
behavior take a single-species perspective, which is often driven by the
logistic difficulties of
collecting appropriate data at sea. Passive acoustic monitoring,
provided recording tools exhibit
sufficient bandwidth, has the potential to provide insights into
community structure as devices
operate autonomously simultaneously collecting data on baleen, pinniped
and toothed whale
acoustic presence. Data can provide information on local species
diversity, residency times and
co-occurrence. Here, we used multi-year passive acoustic data from 6
sites in the Weddell Sea,
Southern Ocean, to explore how local marine mammal community
compositions develop over
time and in relation to sea-ice. Diversity peaked in austral late spring
and early summer, shortly
before seasonal sea-ice break-up. The effective number of species
exhibited little variation over
time, reflecting that species remain in Antarctic waters throughout
austral winter. Community
composition showed almost complete seasonal overturn, indicating that
species replace each
other throughout the year. For all 6 sites, community dissimilarity
increased with increasing temporal distance,reflecting temporal trends
in community composition beyond seasonality. Several species exhibited
significant positive or negative co-occurrence patterns over time. These
seasonal associations were consistent across all 5 oceanic sites, but
partly inversed at the Western
Antarctic Peninsula recording site. This study shows that the
application of biodiversity metrics to
passive acoustic monitoring data can foster insights into the timing of
behaviors and community
composition, which can boost the interpretation of responses in the
light of ongoing environmental
changes.
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