Markov modeling for a satellite tag data record of whale diving behavior

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Hewitt, Joshua, Quick, Nicola J., Gelfand, Alan E., Schick, Robert S.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Hewitt, Joshua
Quick, Nicola J.
Gelfand, Alan E.
Schick, Robert S.
author_facet Hewitt, Joshua
Quick, Nicola J.
Gelfand, Alan E.
Schick, Robert S.
contents Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) are the deepest diving marine mammal, consistently diving to depths exceeding 1,000m for durations longer than an hour, making them difficult animals to study. They are important to study because they are sensitive to disturbances from naval sonar. Satellite-linked telemetry devices provide up to 14-day long records of dive behavior. However, the time series of depths is discretized to coarse bins due to bandwidth limitations. We analyze telemetry data from beaked whales that were exposed to moderate levels of sonar within controlled exposure experiments (CEEs) to study behavioral responses to sound exposure. We model the data as a hidden Markov model (HMM) over the time series of discrete depth bins, introducing partially observed movement types and recent diving activity covariates to model marginal non-stationarity. Movement types provide more flexible modeling for CEEs than partially observed dive stages, which are more commonly used in dive behavior HMMs. We estimate the proposed model within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, using HMM methods to compute marginalized likelihoods and posterior predictive distributions. We assess behavioral response by comparing observed post-exposure behavior to usual unexposed behavior via the posterior predictive distribution. The model quantifies patterns in baseline diving behavior and finds evidence that beaked whales deviate in response to sound. We find evidence that (i) beaked whales initially shorten the time they spend between deep dives, which may have physiological effects and (ii) subsequently avoid deep dives, which can result in lost foraging opportunities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_09557
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Markov modeling for a satellite tag data record of whale diving behavior
Hewitt, Joshua
Quick, Nicola J.
Gelfand, Alan E.
Schick, Robert S.
Applications
Cuvier's beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) are the deepest diving marine mammal, consistently diving to depths exceeding 1,000m for durations longer than an hour, making them difficult animals to study. They are important to study because they are sensitive to disturbances from naval sonar. Satellite-linked telemetry devices provide up to 14-day long records of dive behavior. However, the time series of depths is discretized to coarse bins due to bandwidth limitations. We analyze telemetry data from beaked whales that were exposed to moderate levels of sonar within controlled exposure experiments (CEEs) to study behavioral responses to sound exposure. We model the data as a hidden Markov model (HMM) over the time series of discrete depth bins, introducing partially observed movement types and recent diving activity covariates to model marginal non-stationarity. Movement types provide more flexible modeling for CEEs than partially observed dive stages, which are more commonly used in dive behavior HMMs. We estimate the proposed model within a hierarchical Bayesian framework, using HMM methods to compute marginalized likelihoods and posterior predictive distributions. We assess behavioral response by comparing observed post-exposure behavior to usual unexposed behavior via the posterior predictive distribution. The model quantifies patterns in baseline diving behavior and finds evidence that beaked whales deviate in response to sound. We find evidence that (i) beaked whales initially shorten the time they spend between deep dives, which may have physiological effects and (ii) subsequently avoid deep dives, which can result in lost foraging opportunities.
title Markov modeling for a satellite tag data record of whale diving behavior
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.09557