Publications

Graphical abstracts of selected papers

In this page you can review graphical abstracts from selected papers authored or co-authored by members of the Marine Mammal Ecology Lab . Clicking on the figure will open a new window with the pdf file of the paper or, due to copyright, a link to it. You can read all the pee-reviewed papers by using the drop-down menu of the Publications tab in the top menu.

Papers with no student authors

Harbour seal DNA diet percent averages (RRA) for all of the Salish Sea samples combined. Please note that considerable diet variability exists between haulout sites and regions in the Salish Sea. The DNA-based dataset described herein contains records from 4,625 harbour seal scats representing 52 haulout sites, 7 years, 12 calendar months, and a total of 11,641 prey identifications. Prey morphological hard parts analyses were conducted alongside, resulting in corresponding hard parts data for 92% of the scat DNA samples. (from Thomas et al. 2022 Sci Data).


Mean acoustic detection rates of harbor porpoises in the Baltic Sea. One of the largest ever passive acoustic monitoring studies has been carried out by eight Baltic Sea nations to estimate the abundance of the critically endangered Baltic Proper harbour porpoise for the first time. By logging porpoise echolocation signals at 298 stations during May 2011–April 2013, calibrating the loggers’ spatial detection performance at sea, and measuring the click rate of tagged individuals, an abundance of 71–1105 individuals (95% CI, point estimate 491) was estimated during May–October within the population's proposed management border. (from Amundin et al. 2022 Ecol Evol).


Monthly consumption (in millions of fish) of age-0 Chinook (top) and coho salmon (bottom) eaten by harbor seals in the Puget Sound during 2016-2018. The purple series shows model simulation estimates using prey size data from nearshore areas, while the blue series shows estimates using prey size derived from otoliths extracted from seal scat samples. Solid lines show median estimates and dashed lines depict the 95% confidence intervals for each series. (from Nelson et al. 2021 Can J Fish Aquat Sci).

Papers by graduate students

Map of the study site. Stars indicate where samples of scat from North American river otters (Lontra canadensis) were collected (from Buzzell et al. 2023 Fish Bull).


Odds of individual harbor seal foraging success relative to visits to Whatcom Creek during salmon runs. There was no relationship between the odds of a successful foraging attempt for each of the 170 individual harbor seals and the number of times that they visited the creek (from Freeman et al. 2022 Sci Rep).


Harbor seal average specialization values and 95%CIs relative to sex. Relative specialization results indicated that the behavior of both sexes was similar in the spring but diverged in the summer and fall (from Voelker et al. 2020 Ecol Evol).