Graduate Students of Kenneth S. Norris

Seasonal Resting Metabolic Rate and Food Intake of Captive Pacific White-Sided Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens)

“…Metabolic rates of our two Pacific white-sided dolphins that met the criteria for "resting" were generally high, but within the upper expected range of values predicted for marine mammals by Costa & Williams (1999). Proximally, this high metabolic rate may be associated with Pacific white-sided dolphins having unusually large thyroid glands relative to their body size when compared to other odontocetes and to terrestrial mammals of similar masses (Ridgway & Patton, 1971;Kot, 2010).…”

“…Similarly, the model that best fit the mass-specific energy intake data also accounted for the random effect of animal ID and the fixed effect of season, and was not influenced by any other parameters, including air temperature, water temperature, (1) harbor porpoise (Karandeeva et al, 1973), (3) Pacific white-sided dolphin (Ohizumi et al, 2009), (4) bottlenose dolphin (Williams et al, 1993), (5) bottlenose dolphin (Williams, 2001), (6) bottlenose dolphin (Karandeeva et al, 1973), and (7 & 8) female and male killer whales (Kriete, 1995). Some of these data were previously summarized in Costa & Williams (1999) and Hunter (2005). The dashed line represents Kleiber's (1975) mouse to elephant curve, and the solid line represents two times Kleiber's predictions (predicted regression for marine mammals; Costa & Williams, 1999). or changes in body mass (AIC = -303.04, log likelihood = 158.52).…”

“…Some of these data were previously summarized in Costa & Williams (1999) and Hunter (2005). The dashed line represents Kleiber's (1975) mouse to elephant curve, and the solid line represents two times Kleiber's predictions (predicted regression for marine mammals; Costa & Williams, 1999). or changes in body mass (AIC = -303.04, log likelihood = 158.52). Post-hoc glht results revealed that both total and mass-specific food intake were significantly highest in fall (October-December; mean 49.56 ± 3.61 MJ day -1 , 0.43 ± 0.04 MJ kg -1 day -1 ; p < 0.001) and relatively constant during the other seasons (Figures 3c & 3d).…”

“…Some research suggests that the RMRs of marine mammals are elevated when compared to terrestrial species (Brodie, 1975;Snyder, 1983;Costa & Williams, 1999;Hunter, 2005). Other researchers suggest marine mammals have similar maintenance metabolic rates as their terrestrial counterparts (Gaskin, 1982;Lavigne, 1982;Worthy, 1987;Kasting et al, 1989) and that many of the differences reported are due to experimental errors, including animal stress levels.…”