Biology 3601A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Southern Resident Killer Whales, Gouldian Finch, Persistent Organic Pollutant
21 Oct 2016
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What you excrete is not necessarily these specific hormones. Blood test, urine sample, feces test (especially in wild animals) Using fecal steroids as a window on the physiology of wild animals. Bad krogh model except for in the captive setting in this case we are talking about orca in the wild. Critically endangered interested to know why that is: remain coastal, exclusively piscivorous (cf. transients that specialize on either mammals or sharks, population declined by 20% 1995-2001. 3 flavours of killer whales resident whales (hunt almost entirely fish), transient whales (hunt primarily mammals), lone-transient whales (hunt primarily sharks) One hypothesis: decline is due to the abundance of boats around them, stressing them out. Another hypothesis: population is correlated to prey availability, so not getting enough food. Another hypothesis: accumulation of toxins, they are being poisoned not addressing this in this lecture. Test the vessel impact and inadequate prey hypotheses using hormone profiles of srkw scat.
