Long-term, high frequency in situ measurements of intertidal mussel bed temperatures using biomimetic sensors.

At a proximal level, the physiological impacts of global climate change on ectothermic organisms are manifest as changes in body temperatures. Especially for plants and animals exposed to direct solar radiation, body temperatures can be substantially different from air temperatures. We deployed biomimetic sensors that approximate the thermal characteristics of intertidal mussels at 71 sites worldwide, from 1998-present. Loggers recorded temperatures at 10-30 min intervals nearly continuously at multiple intertidal elevations. Comparisons against direct measurements of mussel tissue temperature indicated errors of ~2.0-2.5 °C, during daily fluctuations that often exceeded 15°-20 °C. Geographic patterns in thermal stress based on biomimetic logger measurements were generally far more complex than anticipated based only on 'habitat-level' measurements of air or sea surface temperature. This unique data set provides an opportunity to link physiological measurements with spatially- and temporally-explicit field observations of body temperature.

Using simulation to evaluate wildlife survey designs: polar bears and seals in the Chukchi Sea.

Logistically demanding and expensive wildlife surveys should ideally yield defensible estimates. Here, we show how simulation can be used to evaluate alternative survey designs for estimating wildlife abundance. Specifically, we evaluate the potential of instrument-based aerial surveys (combining infrared imagery with high-resolution digital photography to detect and identify species) for estimating abundance of polar bears and seals in the Chukchi Sea. We investigate the consequences of different levels of survey effort, flight track allocation and model configuration on bias and precision of abundance estimators. For bearded seals (0.07 animals km(-2)) and ringed seals (1.29 animals km(-2)), we find that eight flights traversing ≈7840 km are sufficient to achieve target precision levels (coefficient of variation (CV)<20%) for a 2.94×10(5) km(2) study area. For polar bears (provisionally, 0.003 animals km(-2)), 12 flights traversing ≈11 760 km resulted in CVs ranging from 28 to 35%. Estimators were relatively unbiased with similar precision over different flight track allocation strategies and estimation models, although some combinations had superior performance. These findings suggest that instrument-based aerial surveys may provide a viable means for monitoring seal and polar bear populations on the surface of the sea ice over large Arctic regions. More broadly, our simulation-based approach to evaluating survey designs can serve as a template for biologists designing their own surveys.