Damian Lidgard

Damian Lidgard
Bedford Institute of Oceanography · Fisheries and Oceans Canada

PhD

About

37
Publications
13,326
Reads
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636
Citations
Introduction
My research interest is in the behavioural ecology of marine mammals. I have worked with several species through multiple research projects in North America, Ireland and the UK. Since 2019 I have been working at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography as an Aquatic Biologist where I plan, organise and conduct the Sable Island grey seal program.
Additional affiliations
July 1999 - October 2003
La Rochelle Université
Position
  • PhD Student
October 2009 - present
Dalhousie University
Position
  • Research Associate
Education
September 1992 - September 1993
University of Aberdeen
Field of study
  • Environmental Science

Publications

Publications (37)
Article
Full-text available
Few studies have examined the impacts of externally fitted data‐loggers and telemetry tags on pinnipeds. We tested for instrument effects on body mass of lactating female gray seals and their offspring and probability of pupping in the next breeding season. Known‐age adult females ( n = 216) were fitted with instruments in winter, spring, and fall...
Article
Full-text available
Most vertebrate offspring must transition from the relative security of parental care (nutrition and protection) to independent foraging. Offspring face many challenges during this critical period, particularly in species where parental care ends at weaning, such as the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus). We studied the development of movement behaviou...
Article
Full-text available
Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species acr...
Article
Full-text available
Studies using marine animals instrumented with biologging devices to estimate phytoplankton biomass have typically omitted continental shelf regions due to the confounding effects of optically active constituents other than phytoplankton present. The lack of algorithms for these regions is problematic, as they are some of the most biologically prod...
Article
Obtaining high resolution data on the physical and biological conditions in marine ecosystems is needed to better understand the impacts of environmental variability. The instrumentation of deep-diving, large marine predators has proven useful in sampling these conditions below the surface at fine spatio-temporal scales that would otherwise be extr...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The heterogeneous oceanographic conditions of continental shelf ecosystems result in a three-dimensionally patchy distribution of prey available to upper-trophic level predators. The association of bio-physical conditions with movement patterns of large marine predators has been demonstrated in diverse taxa. However, obtaining subsurfa...
Article
Full-text available
Change in breeding phenology is often a response to environmental forcing, but less is known of the mechanism underlying such changes and their fitness consequences. Here, we report on changes in the breeding phenology from a 27-year longitudinal study (1991-2017) of individually marked, known-aged grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) on Sable Island, N...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The distribution of prey in the ocean is spatially and temporally patchy. How predators respond to this prey patchiness may have consequences on their foraging success, and thus physical condition. The recent ability to record fine-scale movements of marine animals combined with novel home-range analyses that incorporate the dimension...
Article
Full-text available
Wild animals show consistent individual variation in behavior across time and/or contexts, now referred to as animal personality. While this variability may have important ecological and evolutionary implications, how and why variation in animal personality is maintained in a natural population remains unclear. In this study, we assessed the influe...
Preprint
Full-text available
In 2015, as part of the Ocean Tracking Network’s bioprobe initiative, 20 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) were tagged with a high-resolution (> 30 Hz) inertial tags (> 30 Hz), a depth-temperature satellite tag (0.1 Hz), and an acoustic transceiver on Sable Island for 6 months. Comparable to similar large-scale studies in movement ecology, the unprec...
Preprint
Full-text available
In 2015, as part of the Ocean Tracking Network’s bioprobe initiative, 20 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) were tagged with a high-resolution (> 30 Hz) inertial tags (> 30 Hz), a depth-temperature satellite tag (0.1 Hz), and an acoustic transceiver on Sable Island for 6 months. Comparable to similar large-scale studies in movement ecology, the unprec...
Article
Full-text available
Tracking of marine animals has increased exponentially in the past decade, and the resulting data could lead to an in-depth understanding of the causes and consequences of movement in the ocean. However, most common marine tracking systems are associated with large measurement errors. Accounting for these errors requires the use of hierarchical mod...
Article
Full-text available
Influenza A virus (IAV) has been associated with multiple unusual mortality events (UMEs) in North Atlantic pinnipeds, frequently attributed to spillover of virus from wild-bird reservoirs. To determine if endemic infection persists outside of UMEs, we undertook a multiyear investigation of IAV in healthy, live-captured Northwest Atlantic gray seal...
Article
Full-text available
Background Paired with satellite location telemetry, animal-borne instruments can collect spatiotemporal data describing the animal’s movement and environment at a scale relevant to its behavior. Ecologists have developed methods for identifying the area(s) used by an animal (e.g., home range) and those used most intensely (utilization distributio...
Article
Interactions between upper trophic‐level predators and their prey remain poorly understood due to their inaccessibility during foraging at sea. This uncertainty has fuelled debate on the impact of predation by species such as the grey seal ( Halichoerus grypus ) on fish stocks. The Vemco Mobile Transceiver (VMT) has provided us with new knowledge o...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding the nature of inter-specific and conspecific interactions in the ocean is challenging because direct observation is usually impossible. The development of dual transmitter/receivers, Vemco Mobile Transceivers (VMT), and satellite-linked (e.g. GPS) tags provides a unique opportunity to better understand between and within species inter...
Article
Full-text available
Pinnipeds are abundant upper trophic level predators in many marine ecosystems. Top-down effects of their consumption can play important roles in ecosystem structure and functioning. However, interactions between pinnipeds and their prey remain poorly understood due to their inaccessibility while foraging at sea. This uncertainty has fueled debate...
Article
Full-text available
Satellite telemetry data have substantially increased our understanding of habitat use and foraging behaviour of upper-trophic marine predators, but fall short of providing an understanding of their social behaviour. We sought to determine whether novel acoustic and archival GPS data could be used to examine at-sea associations among grey seals (Ha...
Article
Full-text available
Culling is widely practised as a means to reduce predation effects of terrestrial carnivores, birds and marine mammals in many parts of the world. Of marine mammals, coastal pinniped species have usually been the target of culling programs, but dolphins and a large odontocete have also been culled. We reviewed the published literature on marine mam...
Article
Full-text available
We examined age-related changes and consistency in physical and behavioural traits of 20 male grey seals (Halichoerus grypus (Fabricius, 1791)) and implications for a proxy of mating success (number of oestrous females attended) over four successive breeding seasons on Sable Island, Canada. Across the study, young males (10–15 years) gained body ma...
Article
Studies on primates and other taxa have shown that the physiological response of an individual to stress reflects their social status. We combined behavioral observations with measures of stress to test the hypothesis that stress is an important physiological determinant of mating behavior and success in the male grey seal. Known-age males (N=19) w...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of body size and body composition as determinants of conditional mating tactics exhibited in male grey seals. We combined behavioral observations with measures of energy expenditure and success on 42 known-age individuals during the breeding seasons of 1997--2001 at Sable Island, Canada. Males...
Article
Studies using molecular markers have shown that some grey seal males may be gaining success through exhibiting alternative mating tactics. We estimated the probability of fertilization success of grey seal males exhibiting the primary tactic of female defence and one alternative tactic of mating with departing females on Sable Island, Nova Scotia,...
Article
Full-text available
We examined the diving behaviour of breeding male grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) at Sable Island, Nova Scotia, from 1997 to 2001. The proportion of time spent at sea varied between 0 and 78% (N = 30). Males engaged in deep (43.4 ± 3.3 m (mean ± SE), N = 27) diving, and these dives were clustered into bouts, which mostly occurred during long trips...
Thesis
Full-text available
Abstract The majority of behavioural studies on pinnipeds, and indeed large mammals, have focused on the primary tactic due to the difficulty of studying alternative tactics that are more opportunistic. However, this limits our understanding of the nature and of the likely proximate factors that may drive the occurrence of alternative tactics and t...
Article
A two year survey was conducted to estimate the population status of grey seals on the east and south-cast coasts of Ireland and to document the types of habitat used. Surveys were concentrated around the known breeding sites of Lambay Island on the cast coast and the Great Saltee on the south-east coast, during the breeding seasons of 1997 and 199...

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