Modeling the functional link between movement, feeding activity, and condition in a marine predator

The ability to quantify animals’ feeding activity and the resulting changes in their body condition as they move in the environment is fundamental to our understanding of a population’s ecology. We use satellite tracking data from northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), paired with simultaneous diving information, to develop a Bayesian state-space model that concurrently estimates an individual’s location, feeding activity, and...