In an era of rapid environmental change and increasing human presence, researchers need efficient tools for tracking contaminants to monitor the health of Antarctic flora and fauna. Here, we examined the utility of leopard seal whiskers as a biomonitoring tool that reconstructs time-series of significant ecological and physiological biomarkers. Leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) are a sentinel species in the Western Antarctic Peninsula due to their apex predator status and top-down effects on several Antarctic species....

Assessing the impacts of anthropogenic degradation and climate change on global carbon cycling is hindered by a lack of clear, flexible, and easy-to-use productivity models along with scarce trait and productivity data for parameterizing and testing those models. We provide a simple solution: a mechanistic framework (RS-CFM) that combines remotely-sensed foliar-trait and canopy-structural data with trait-based metabolic theory to efficiently map productivity at large spatial scales. We test this framework by quantifying net primary productivity...

We collected 25 years of demographic, foraging route, diving, and diet data from northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) to determine the influence of behavioral strategies and mass gain during 8-month foraging trips on reproduction, survival, and lifetime reproductive success.