Diving behavior in a free-living, semi-aquatic herbivore, the Eurasian beaver Castor fiber.

ABSTRACT: Semi-aquatic mammals have secondarily returned to the aquatic environment, although they spend a major part of their life operating in air. Moving both on land, as well as in, and under water is challenging because such species are considered to be imperfectly adapted to both environments. We deployed accelerometers combined with a depth sensor to study the diving behavior of 12 free-living Eurasian beavers Castor fiber in southeast Norway between 2009 and 2011 to examine the extent to which beavers conformed with mass-dependent dive capacities, expecting them to be poorer than wholly aquatic species. Dives were generally shallow (<1 m) and of short duration (<30 s), suggesting that the majority of dives were aerobic. Dive parameters such as maximum diving depth, dive duration, and

SUBMITTER: Graf PM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5773300 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature