Abstract

Elephant seals have a nomadic lifestyle. Travelling between colonies and foraging out in the Pacific Ocean, northern elephant seals eventually return to their home colony. But how do they relocate home after a journey? Curious to find how northern elephant seals navigate to find their way home, an international team of researchers based in Japan, California and Scotland led by Moe Matsumura attached accelerometers, depth gauges, GPS trackers and VHF transmitters to three juvenile elephant seals. Releasing the animals in the Pacific Ocean 60 km from their colony, the team tracked the elephant seals' return journeys to try to identify which strategies the animals use (p. 629).Retrieving the trackers when the youngsters returned to shore, the team analysed the seals' GPS diving profiles and saw that they had headed toward land before reaching the coast and following it back to the colony. When submerged the seals swam in almost perfectly straight lines, despite indulging in potentially disorienting drift dives, when they spiral upside down as they descend. However, the seals do not appear to become confused and the team suspects that the animals rely on either acoustic or geomagnetic cues to help them maintain their bearing.Back at the surface, instead of swimming in straight lines the seals switched direction by anything up to 360 deg. Matsumura and her colleagues suspect that the seals use visual landmarks to guide their choice of bearing above the surface. So elephant seals appear to use several strategies when navigating to help them relocate the colony when they have strayed from home.

Highlights

  • Even by invading plants’ standards, the filaree, or common stork’s bill, has been remarkably successful

  • Calculating the amount of energy that was released as the dry awn curled and broke free of the seed head, Evangelista subtracted the amount of energy required to tear the awn away and the energy lost to wind resistance as the seed tumbled through the air, before calculating the distance that the seed could be flung

  • Filaree seeds disperse by using energy stored in the dry awns, which act as springs to fling the seeds by up to 0.5 m

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Even by invading plants’ standards, the filaree, or common stork’s bill, has been remarkably successful. Evangelista explains that when humidity is low the awn dries, curls and drills the seed into the soil.

Results
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call