USAP-DC

The consequences of variation in maternal effects on the ability of offspring to survive, reproduce, and contribute to future generations has rarely been evaluated in polar marine mammals. This is due to the challenges of having adequate data on the survival and reproductive outcomes for numerous offspring born in diverse environmental conditions to mothers with known and diverse sets of traits. This research project will evaluate the survival and reproductive consequences of early-life environmental conditions and variation in offspring traits that are related to maternal attributes (e.g. birth date, birth mass, weaning mass, and swimming behavior) in a population of individually marked Weddell seals in the Ross Sea. Results will allow an evaluation of the importance of different types of individuals to the Weddell Seal's population sustenance and better assessments of factors contributing to the population dynamics in the past and into the future. The project allows for documentation of specific individual seal's unique histories and provisioning of such information to the broader science community that seeks to study these seals, educating graduate and undergraduate ecology students, producing science-outreach videos, and developing a multi-media iBook regarding the project's science activities, goals and outcomes. The research has the broad objective of evaluating the importance of diverse sources of variation in pup characteristics to survival and reproduction. The study will (1) record birth dates, body mass metrics, and time spent in the water for multiple cohorts of pups (born to known-age mothers) in years with different environmental conditions; (2) mark all pups born in the greater Erebus Bay study area and conduct repeated surveys to monitor fates of these pups through the age of first reproduction; and (3) use analyses specifically designed for data on animals that are individually marked and resighted each year to evaluate hypotheses about how variation in birth dates, pup mass, time spent in the water by pups, and environmental conditions relate to variation in early-life survival and recruitment for those pups. The research will also allow the documentation of the population status that will contribute to the unique long-term database for the local population that dates back to 1978.

Person	Role
Rotella, Jay	Investigator and contact
Garrott, Robert	Co-Investigator

Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems

Award # 1640481

USAP-1640481_1

DataManagementPlan.pdf

Repository	Title (link)	Format(s)	Status
USAP-DC	Demographic data for Weddell Seal colonies in Erebus Bay through the 2017 Antarctic field season	None	exists
USAP-DC	Demographic data for Weddell Seal colonies in Erebus Bay through the 2023 Antarctic field season	Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); Microsoft Access Database 2007	exists

1. Rotella, J. J. (2022). Patterns, sources, and consequences of variation in age‐specific vital rates: Insights from a long‐term study of Weddell seals. Journal of Animal Ecology. Portico. (doi:10.1111/1365-2656.13870)
2. Powell, J., Kalinowski, S., Taper, M., Rotella, J., Davis, C., & Garrott, R. (2023). Evidence of an Absence of Inbreeding Depression in a Wild Population of Weddell Seals (Leptonychotes weddellii). Entropy, 25(3), 403. (doi:10.3390/e25030403)
3. Brusa, J. L., Rotella, J. J., Garrott, R. A., Paterson, J. T., & Link, W. A. (2019). Variation of annual apparent survival and detection rates with age, year and individual identity in male Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) from long‐term mark‐recapture data. Population Ecology, 62(1), 134–150. (doi:10.1002/1438-390x.12036)
4. Paterson, J. T., Rotella, J. J., Link, W. A., & Garrott, R. (2018). Variation in the vital rates of an Antarctic marine predator: the role of individual heterogeneity. Ecology, 99(10), 2385–2396. (doi:10.1002/ecy.2481)
5. Miller, J. M., Campbell, E. O., Rotella, J. J., Macdonald, K. R., Gelatt, T. S., & Davis, C. S. (2021). Evaluation of novel genomic markers for pedigree construction in an isolated population of Weddell Seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) at White Island, Antarctica. Conservation Genetics Resources. (doi:10.1007/s12686-021-01237-0)
6. Anderson, A. K., Levinson, P. M., Conklin, A., & Rotella, J. J. (2024). Observations of Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii) supernumerary nipples. Polar Biology. (doi:10.1007/s00300-024-03228-x)
7. Levinson, P. M., & Rotella, J. J. (2025). Immigration and emigration in the isolated White Island Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii) population. Antarctic Science, 1–4. (doi:10.1017/s0954102024000476)