Arctic hooded seals (Cystophora cristata) are monogastric carnivores that go through extreme fasting and re-feeding in early life. They are born isolated on sea ice; suckle high-fat milk for four days and may then fast for up to one month before they start hunting and feeding on small prey (fish and crustaceans). Previous studies of the gut microbiota in pinnipeds have focused on the large intestine, ...

Mineral ballasting enhances carbon export from the surface to the deep ocean; however, little is known about the role of this process in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean. Here, we propose gypsum ballasting as a new mechanism that likely facilitated enhanced vertical carbon export from an under-ice phytoplankton bloom dominated by the haptophyte Phaeocystis. In the spring 2015 abundant gypsum crystals ...

Male bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus) use vocal displays to attract females and to compete with other males during the mating season. This makes it possible to monitor breeding populations of this species using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM). This study analysed year-round acoustic data records from AURAL instruments in Svalbard (Norway) to investigate seasonal variation in the acoustic presence ...

Chinook salmon are widely distributed in offshore waters of the North Pacific Ocean, and of great economical and subsistence importance; however, little is known about their oceanic ecology. To address this, we tagged 43 Chinook salmon <i>Oncorhynchus tshawytscha</i> (57–100 cm) with pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) in the eastern (October– December) and central Bering Sea (August) to provide ...

The response of animals to anthropogenic noise can be aggravated by lack of familiarity with its auditory pattern and also by nervousness characteristic of particular phases of their life cycle. Both conditions apply in the Arctic where human activity is highly localised and field operations, being largely restricted to summer, coincide with the period when animals produce and nurse offspring and, ...

In northernmost Norway the right to own and manage the land in Finnmark, was transferred from the state to the the Finnmark Estate (FeFo) in 2005. The land tenure arrangement was a result of land claims made by the indigenous Sami people of Norway. The resources and the land that was previously managed to the best for all Norwegian citizens by the state, is now managed to the best for the ...

In high latitude coastal regions, benthic scavenger communities are largely composed of invertebrates that play a key role in the cycling of organic matter. Factors including temperature and depth can structure Arctic and Subarctic fjord benthic communities, but the response of scavenging communities to these factors is poorly known. To address this, we compared scavenging fauna in eight fjords with ...

En økning i rovdyrbestandene i reinbeiteområdene regnes av næringen som den viktigste enkeltfaktoren som forårsaker lav kalvetilgang, store tap av dyr og derigjennom lav produksjon i tamreinflokkene i Norge. Endringer i reintall og klimatiske forhold er imidlertid også viktige faktorer som påvirker reproduksjon og overlevelse hos rein. Gitt at predasjon har stor innvirkning på reinens demografi ...

Temperatures in mountain areas are increasing at a higher rate than the Northern Hemisphere land average, but how fauna may respond, in particular in terms of phenology, remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to assess how elevation could modify the relationships between climate variability (air temperature and snow melt‐out date), the timing of plant phenology and egg‐laying date of ...

<br> 1. Ecological opportunity (i.e. the diversity of available resources) has a pivotal role in shaping niche variation and trophic specialisation of animals. However, ecological opportunity can be described with regard to both diversity and abundance of resources. The degree to which these two components contribute to niche variation remains unexplored. <br>2. To address this, we used an ...