Phenological tracking associated with increased salmon consumption by brown bears.

ABSTRACT: There is growing interest in the ecological significance of phenological diversity, particularly in how spatially variable resource phenologies (i.e. resource waves) prolong foraging opportunities for mobile consumers. While there is accumulating evidence of consumers moving across landscapes to surf resource waves, there is little data quantifying how phenological tracking influences resource consumption due to the challenge of documenting all the components of this ecological phenomenon (i.e., phenological variation, consumer movement, resource consumption, and consumer fitness). We examined the space use of GPS collared female brown bears to quantify the exploitation of a salmon resource wave by individual bears. We then estimated salmon consumption levels in the same individuals using

SUBMITTER: Deacy WW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6054687 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature