Geographic variations in underwater male Weddell seal Trills suggest breeding area fidelity

Adult Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) exhibit site fidelity to where they first breed but juveniles, and perhaps transient adult males, may disperse from their natal location. If there is mixing between adjacent breeding groups, we would expect that common vocalisations would exhibit clinal patterns. Underwater Trill vocalisations of male Weddell seals at Mawson, Davis, Casey, McMurdo Sound, Neumayer and Drescher Inlet separated by ca. 500 to greater than 9,000 km, were examined for evidence of clinal variation. Trills are only emitted by males and have a known territorial defence function. Trills from Davis and Mawson, ca. 630 km apart, were distinct from each other and exhibited the greatest number of unique frequency contour patterns.


The acoustic features (duration, waveform, frequency contour) of Trills from Neumayer and Drescher Inlet, ca. 500 km apart, were more distinct from each other than they were from the other four locations. General Discriminant Analysis and Classification Tree Analysis correctly classified 65.8 and 76.9% of the Trills to the correct location. The classification errors assigned more locations to sites greater than 630 km away than to nearest neighbours. Weddell seal Trills exhibit geographic variation but there is no evidence of a clinal pattern. This suggests that males remain close to single breeding areas throughout their lifetime.


This work was completed as part of ASAC project 1132 and 2122 (ASAC_1132, ASAC_2122).

Simple

Identification info

Alternate title
Geographic variations in underwater male Weddell seal Trills suggest breeding area fidelity
Date (Publication)
2008-07-16
Edition
1
Citation identifier
Dataset DOI

Title
Information and documentation - Digital object identifier system
Date (Publication)
2012-04-23
Citation identifier
ISO 26324:2012

Citation identifier
doi:10.4225/15/54D05243F0EFF

Originator

Terhune, J.M.

Publisher

Australian Antarctic Data Centre

Principal investigator

TERHUNE, JOHN MOORE
Department of Biology
PO Box 5050
University of New Brunswick
Saint John
New Brunswick
E2L 4L5
Canada

Collaborator

TERHUNE, JOHN MOORE
Department of Biology
PO Box 5050
University of New Brunswick
Saint John
New Brunswick
E2L 4L5
Canada
Name
CAASM Metadata
Website
https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/ASAC_1132-2

Status
Completed

Custodian

AU/AADC > Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia - AADC, DATA OFFICER (DATA CENTER CONTACT)
Australian Antarctic Division
203 Channel Highway
Kingston
Tasmania
7050
Australia
Topic category
  • Biota
  • Location
  • Oceans

Extent

N
S
E
W


Extent

Description
Temporal Coverage

Temporal extent

TimePeriod
1991-10-01 2006-12-31
Title
Geographic variations in underwater male Weddell seal Trills suggest breeding area fidelity.
Date (Publication)
2008
Citation identifier
31

Author

Terhune, J.M., Quin, D., Dell'Apa, A., Mirhaj, M., Plotz, J., Kindermann, L. and Bornemann, H.
Name
Polar Biology
Page
671-680
NASA/GCMD Earth Science Keywords
  • EARTH SCIENCE > CRYOSPHERE > SEA ICE
  • EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > SEA ICE
  • EARTH SCIENCE > BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION > ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES > MAMMALS > CARNIVORES > SEALS/SEA LIONS/WALRUSES
  • EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOSYSTEMS > MARINE ECOSYSTEMS > COASTAL
  • EARTH SCIENCE > BIOSPHERE > ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS > SPECIES/POPULATION INTERACTIONS > POPULATION DYNAMICS
Keywords
  • Weddell seal
  • vocalisation
  • geographic variation
  • Leptonychotes weddellii
NASA/GCMD Earth Science Keywords
  • HYDROPHONES
  • ACOUSTIC RECEIVERS
NASA/GCMD Earth Science Keywords
  • FIELD SURVEYS
  • FIELD INVESTIGATION
NASA/GCMD Earth Science Keywords
  • AMD/AU
  • CEOS
  • AMD
NASA/GCMD Earth Science Keywords
  • OCEAN > SOUTHERN OCEAN
  • CONTINENT > ANTARCTICA
  • GEOGRAPHIC REGION > POLAR

Resource constraints

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This metadata record is publicly available.

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licence
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These data are publicly available for download from the provided URLs.

Resource constraints

File type
Portable Network Graphic
Linkage
Creative Commons by Attribution logo

Title
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Website
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Legal code for Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 International license

Use constraints
licence
Other constraints
This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=ASAC_1132-2 when using these data. The investigators and technical contacts must be credited when using these data. The names and addresses of the investigators are listed in the Polar Biology publication attached below (Polar Biology, 2008, 31: 671-680).
Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Distribution Information

Distributor

Distributor

AU/AADC > Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia - AADC, DATA OFFICER (DATA CENTER CONTACT)
Australian Antarctic Division
203 Channel Highway
Kingston
Tasmania
7050
Australia

Distributor

Fees
free
Planned available datetime
2008-07-16T00:00:00

Distributor

Fees
free
Planned available datetime
2008-07-16T00:00:00
Units of distribution
kb
Transfer size
31
Distribution format
  • excel

Units of distribution
kb
Transfer size
395
Distribution format
  • pdf

OnLine resource
GET DATA

Download point for the data - excel spreadsheet

OnLine resource
PROJECT HOME PAGE

Public information for ASAC project 1132

OnLine resource
PROJECT HOME PAGE

Public information for ASAC project 2122

OnLine resource
VIEW RELATED INFORMATION

Download point for the data - paper

OnLine resource
VIEW RELATED INFORMATION

Citation reference for this metadata record and dataset

Resource lineage

Statement
The data are measurements relating to the acoustic properties of Weddell seal underwater Trill vocalisations. The measures include a broad classification of the waveform (sinusoidal, frequency modulated or pulsed)at the start and end of the Trill, the duration (milliseconds) and the frequency (Hz) at the beginning, end and at 9 other equally spaced intervals along the call. Trills were recorded in different years from 6 locations around Antarctica. Only Trill vocalisations were analysed because they are only made by males and they have a known territorial defence function.
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed
Maintenance note
2008-07-16 - record created by Jack Terhune. 2008-08-05 - record loaded and modified (links to data added and keywords added) by Dave Connell. 2010-07-26 - record updated by Dave Connell to change URL Content Type. 2014-08-28 - record updated by Dave Connell. 2015-02-03 - record updated by Dave Connell to add a Dataset DOI.

Metadata

Metadata identifier
string/ASAC_1132-2

Language
English
Character encoding
UTF8

Author

TERHUNE, JOHN MOORE
Department of Biology
PO Box 5050
University of New Brunswick
Saint John
New Brunswick
E2L 4L5
Canada

Sponsor

University of New Brunswick, Canada

Owner

AADC

Type of resource

Resource scope
Dataset

Alternative metadata reference

Title
gov.nasa.gsfc.gcmd
Citation identifier
2538ef70-76ff-4872-a22d-c09b40a4d83b

Alternative metadata reference

Title
gov.nasa.gsfc.gcmd
Date (Last Revision)
2015-11-29T18:17:34

Identifier

Description
metadata.extraction_date

Alternative metadata reference

Title
gov.nasa.gsfc.gcmd
Citation identifier
8.6

Metadata linkage
http://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/ASAC_1132-2

Point of truth for the metadata record

Date info (Creation)
2008-07-16T00:00:00
Date info (Last Update)
2017-04-26

Metadata standard

Title
ISO 19115-3
Edition
2014
Other citation details
Version 1
Title
DIF to ISO 19115-1 Profile
 
 

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