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- Title
Maternal and offspring effects on the timing of parturition in western Steller sea lions ( Eumetopias jubatus).
- Authors
Maniscalco, John M.; Parker, Pamela
- Abstract
Identifying factors that affect the timing of parturition among annual breeders is important to aid our understanding of how variations may adversely affect population trends over both short and long temporal scales. We investigated the effect of several parameters on the timing of parturition among individual Steller sea lions ( Eumetopias jubatus (Schreber, 1776)) over 6 years between 2005 and 2016 using an information-theoretic approach. In addition to the random effect of year, birth and care of a pup in the previous year had the largest effect on parturition, causing a 2.4 day delay. Maternal age was negatively correlated with timing of parturition and male pups were born nearly a day earlier than female pups, on average. There was limited support for effects of sex and mass, with heavier pups born marginally earlier than lighter ones. This study illustrates some of the complexity of variables that can influence the timing of birth in this species and which should be considered in models that attempt to identify long-term trends in changing marine ecosystems.
- Subjects
PARTURITION; STELLER'S sea lion; ANIMAL breeding; MATERNAL age; MARINE ecology
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Zoology, 2018, Vol 96, Issue 4, p333
- ISSN
0008-4301
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1139/cjz-2017-0058