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Randall William Davis | |
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Born | Los Angeles, California | May 10, 1952
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, San Diego |
Known for | Adaptations in marine mammals for deep, prolonged diving Animal-borne video and data recorders Methods to rehabilitate oiled sea otters |
Awards | Fulbright Fellow USGS site designation in Antarctica Non-invasive research methods for wildlife |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physiological and behavioral ecology of marine mammals and other aquatic vertebrates |
Institutions | Texas A&M University at Galveston |
Doctoral advisor | Gerald Kooyman |
Randall William Davis (born 10 May 1952) is an American educator [1] and researcher who studies the physiology and behavioral ecology of marine mammals and other aquatic vertebrates. His physiological research focuses on adaptations of marine mammals for deep, prolonged diving. [2] Davis has continually emphasized the importance of studying aquatic animals in their natural environment and has spent many years developing animal-borne instruments that record video and monitor three-dimensional movements, swimming performance and environmental variables to better understand their behavior and ecology. [3] [4] His academic endeavors and 94 research expeditions have taken him to 64 countries and territories on seven continents and all of the world's oceans.
Randall Davis is the oldest son of Charles Davis and Beverly Sheldon who met and married in Los Angeles after the Second World War. His father, who was from Iola, Kansas, moved to Southern California in the 1930s, and his mother was a native of Los Angeles. In 1958, at the age of five, Davis moved from Los Angeles to the nearby San Gabriel Valley. During his early childhood, he developed an interest in marine biology and diving. He kept marine aquaria, collected his own specimens of vertebrates and invertebrates, and obtained his SCUBA certification at age 15. He was the Salutatorian in his graduating Nogales High School class in 1970 and was inducted into the California Scholarship Federation. Davis attended the University of California at Riverside as a pre-medical student, but spent his third year in the Department of Physiology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland as part of the UC Education Abroad Program. It was there that he developed his keen interest in physiology, but he also traveled across Europe and had cultural experiences that motivated him to also study art history, comparative literature, music appreciation and medieval philosophy. He graduated from the University of California with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology in 1974 and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society because of his simultaneous interest in the Liberal Arts. Davis married Ana Maria Melgoza in 1974, and the two of them returned to St. Andrews where he continued his studies in the Department of Physiology. After one year, Davis was accepted into the Physiology and Pharmacology Doctoral Program in the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego.
His first graduate advisor was John B. West, high-altitude respiratory physiologist. In early 1976, Davis conducted an internship with Gerald Kooyman, [5] a comparative physiologist working at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Kooyman was studying the diving physiology of harbor seals and had recently developed the first animal-borne time-depth recorders (TDRs) to study the diving behavior of free-ranging marine mammals. Davis decided to study the physiology of marine mammals and became Kooyman's Doctoral student in 1976. He spent that summer attaching TDRs to northern fur seals on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, then sailed on the National Science Foundation's research vessel Hero to South Georgia Island in the Southern Ocean to study the diving behavior of Antarctic fur seals. [6] He returned to South Georgia Island in 1979 and deployed the first microprocessor-based dive recorders on King Penguins, the results of which were published in the journal Science. [7]
Davis was a member of Kooyman's 1977 Weddell seal study in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica that led to the concept of an aerobic dive limit (ADL) and transformed the field of marine mammal diving physiology. [8] [9] During his five years as a doctoral student at Scripps, Davis studied the intermediary metabolism of harbor seals during forced submersion by using isotopic tracers and was one of the first researchers to use this technique with marine mammals. [10] He interacted with Per Scholander, the comparative physiologist who established the Physiological Research Laboratory at Scripps in the late 1950s.
In 1980, Davis graduated with a Doctoral Degree in Physiology and immediately departed for Antarctica where he, his wife Ana Maria, and two colleagues spent a year (including the austral winter) in a remote field camp at White Island studying the diving behavior of Weddell seals. [11] [12] For his effort, Davis received an Antarctica Service Medal with Winter Ribbon and a U.S. Geological Service Antarctic Site Designation 18773 (Davis Bluff; 79°09’ S, 167°35’ E) on White Island and was inducted into the Explorers Club. [13] Upon returning to Scripps, he received a National Institutes of Health Post-Doctoral Fellowship where he continued his research on harbor seal metabolism during submerged swimming [14] [15] In 1983, he became a Research Scientist at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego under the direction of William Evans. While at Hubbs, Davis and his colleagues studied the thermoregulatory effects of oil on sea otters and developed methods to mitigate the harmful impacts. [16] [17] In March 1989, he was asked by the U.S. Department of the Interior to direct an Oiled Sea Otter Rehabilitation Program following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska. [18] [19] [20] This program rehabilitated 225 oiled sea otters and became the basis for a book that Davis co-authored on methods for rehabilitating oiled sea otters and other fur-bearing mammals. [21]
He also designed and patented (U.S. Patent 5315965, [22] ) an aquatic vivarium for sea otters and aquatic birds, of which 40 are now installed at the Marine Wildlife Veterinary Care and Research Center in Santa Cruz, California. After this one-year effort, for which he received a Distinguished Service Award from the Exxon Corporation, Davis joined the faculty in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University [1] where he has continued his teaching and research.
Davis teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Comparative Physiology, Physiological Ecology of Marine Mammals, Marine Science of the Pacific Rim and a field course on the Coastal Marine Biology of Alaska. [23] He advises the oil industry and state and federal agencies on oil spill contingency planning and response, [24] and teaches an annual training course on the rehabilitation of oiled sea otters for members of the public that would like to volunteer in the event of another spill in Alaska. [25] People that complete this course receive an 8-hour First Responder OSHA Certificate that allows them to work in an oiled otter rehabilitation facility. As part of this training, Davis has an open-access web site (www.wildliferesearch.com) that also includes information on the life history of sea otters for students and the general public. He has published educational articles for primary and secondary students and the general public on the effects of oil on marine mammals and methods to mitigate the harmful impacts. [26] [27] Davis has been featured in or helped to produce six educational films on marine mammals, one of which received first place in the Jack Ward Competition for Non-Commercial Films.
Davis participated in the first deployments of mechanical and microprocessor time-depth recorders (TDRs) on pinnipeds and penguins in the mid-to-late 1970s. [6] [7] The 1980s saw the advent of more sophisticated microprocessor-based archival and satellite-monitored tags and, by 1986, thousands of dives had been recorded on many species of marine mammals, penguins and reptiles. [28] However, time-depth profiles did not provide information on what the animals were doing at depth, so any behavioral interpretations were speculative. This led Davis to partner with an electronics engineer (William Hagey) to begin developing instruments that would eventually record video as well as depth, swim speed, magnetic bearing, pitch and roll, flipper/fluke stroking, GPS location at the surface and environmental variables such as conductivity (salinity), temperature and dissolved oxygen. The first instrument they deployed in 1987 on a Weddell seal in Antarctica was a Sony camcorder in a plastic housing. [29] Although simple by modern standards, it demonstrated that animal-borne video and data recorders could provide a new approach to studying marine animals. [30] [3] [4] [31] By mounting the camera on the head, the video recorded prey capture which could be correlated with three-dimensional movements, swim speed, flipper stroking and body orientation. During the past three decades, Davis and Hagey have developed five generations of video and data recorders that have been deployed on seals, whales, sea turtles and sharks. Each generation was smaller, had more sensors and could record video and data over longer periods of time. With these instruments, researchers can now classify and distinguish the behavioral functions of different dive types and describe foraging strategies and hunting tactics in detail. [32] [33] [34] This work continues to be a major focus of Davis' research.
Davis and his graduate students have spent over four decades studying the morphological, physiological and metabolic adaptations of marine mammals for deep, prolonged diving. Davis' research has shown that the dive response (a fundamental adaptation for breath-hold diving) is more complex than earlier recognized. Although the dive response is a primitive cardiovascular response to protect animals from asphyxia, Davis showed that it has been integrated with the equally primitive exercise (fight-or-flight) response to regulate blood flow in a manner that maintains aerobic metabolism at different levels of submerged exercise. [35] [36] Additional research has revealed morphological, cellular and enzymatic adaptations in a variety of tissues and organs that maintain aerobic metabolism during hypoxia associated with breath-hold diving. [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] Davis’ research has led to new discoveries and insights into the multi-level adaptations, from biochemistry to behavior, for breath-hold diving in marine mammals and other aquatic vertebrates [42] [2]
A third area of Davis’ research has focused on the thermoregulatory physiology of sea otters and the harmful effects of oil exposure. In the 1980s, Davis and his colleague Terrie Williams conducted research for the U.S, Department of the Interior that developed techniques to mitigate the effects of oil on sea otters and other fur bearing marine mammals. [16] [17] In the 1980s, the primary concern of the U.S. Department of the Interior had been the potential devastation of the small California sea otter population by an oil tanker spill. However, it was during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska that their science-based techniques to clean and rehabilitate otters were first used when Davis was asked by the U.S, Department of the Interior to direct the Sea Otter Rehabilitation Program. [18] [19] [43] This effort, involving over 300 people, rehabilitated and released 225 oiled sea otters, the largest number ever held in captivity. Davis then co-authored a book on the methods for rehabilitating oiled sea otters, and this is still the standard among rehabilitation programs for fur bearing marine mammals. [21]
In addition to the effects of oil on sea otters, Davis has studied the behavioral ecology of sea otters in Prince William Sound, Alaska since 2001. This long-term study has included foraging behavior and prey preference, [44] foraging mechanics, [45] female and pup activity and energy budgets, [46] [47] male activity budgets and territoriality, [48] [49] habitat-associations, [50] and non-invasive methods to identify individual sea otters [51] for which he received the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award in 2007. [52] Davis has conducted additional studies on the movements, behavior and habitat associations of cetaceans in the Gulf of Mexico, [53] [54] sperm whales in the Gulf of California and New Zealand, [55] [56] Heaviside's dolphins off the coast of South Africa, [57] northern elephant seals in California, [58] [59] southern elephant seals in Argentina, and spotted seals in Alaska. [60] [61] He has also conducted research on the diving behavior, energetics and maternal strategies of fur seals, [62] [63] [64] [65] sea lions [66] [67] [68] and penguins [69] [70] and locomotion and thermoregulation in whale sharks. [71]
Davis has published about 130 peer-reviewed articles and books, but the most important have focused on: 1) the development and use of animal-borne technology that has extended our understanding of the life history, behavior, ecology and evolutionary adaptations of aquatic animals at sea, 2) the morphological, physiological and metabolic adaptations of marine mammals for deep, prolonged diving and 3) the development and use of techniques to mitigate the effects of oil exposure on sea otters and other fur bearing marine mammals and 4) the behavioral ecology of sea otters.
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The earless seals, phocids, or true seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal lineage, Pinnipedia. All true seals are members of the family Phocidae. They are sometimes called crawling seals to distinguish them from the fur seals and sea lions of the family Otariidae. Seals live in the oceans of both hemispheres and, with the exception of the more tropical monk seals, are mostly confined to polar, subpolar, and temperate climates. The Baikal seal is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal.
Marine mammals are mammals that rely on marine (saltwater) ecosystems for their existence. They include animals such as cetaceans, pinnipeds, sirenians, sea otters and polar bears. They are an informal group, unified only by their reliance on marine environments for feeding and survival.
Sea lions are pinnipeds characterized by external ear flaps, long foreflippers, the ability to walk on all fours, short and thick hair, and a big chest and belly. Together with the fur seals, they make up the family Otariidae, eared seals. The sea lions have six extant and one extinct species in five genera. Their range extends from the subarctic to tropical waters of the global ocean in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with the notable exception of the northern Atlantic Ocean. They have an average lifespan of 20–30 years. A male California sea lion weighs on average about 300 kg (660 lb) and is about 2.4 m (8 ft) long, while the female sea lion weighs 100 kg (220 lb) and is 1.8 m (6 ft) long. The largest sea lions are Steller's sea lions, which can weigh 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) and grow to a length of 3.0 m (10 ft). Sea lions consume large quantities of food at a time and are known to eat about 5–8% of their body weight at a single feeding. Sea lions can move around 16 knots in water and at their fastest they can reach a speed of about 30 knots. Three species, the Australian sea lion, the Galápagos sea lion and the New Zealand sea lion, are listed as endangered.
Pinnipeds, commonly known as seals, are a widely distributed and diverse clade of carnivorous, fin-footed, semiaquatic, mostly marine mammals. They comprise the extant families Odobenidae, Otariidae, and Phocidae, with 34 extant species and more than 50 extinct species described from fossils. While seals were historically thought to have descended from two ancestral lines, molecular evidence supports them as a monophyletic group. Pinnipeds belong to the suborder Caniformia of the order Carnivora; their closest living relatives are musteloids, having diverged about 50 million years ago.
The Steller sea lion, also known as Steller's sea lion or the northern sea lion, is a large, near-threatened species of sea lion, predominantly found in the coastal marine habitats of the northeast Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Northwest regions of North America, from north-central California to Oregon, Washington and British Columbia to Alaska. Its range continues across the Northern Pacific and the Aleutian Islands, all the way to Kamchatka, Magadan Oblast, and the Sea of Okhotsk, south to Honshu's northern coastline. It is the sole member of the genus Eumetopias, and the largest of the so-called eared seals (Otariidae). Among pinnipeds, only the walrus and the two species of elephant seal are bigger. The species is named for the naturalist and explorer Georg Wilhelm Steller, who first described them in 1741. Steller sea lions have attracted considerable attention in recent decades, both from scientists and the general public, due to significant declines in their numbers over an extensive portion of their northern range, notably in Alaska.
The crabeater seal, also known as the krill-eater seal, is a true seal with a circumpolar distribution around the coast of Antarctica. They are the only member of the genus Lobodon. They are medium- to large-sized, relatively slender and pale-colored, found primarily on the free-floating pack ice that extends seasonally out from the Antarctic coast, which they use as a platform for resting, mating, social aggregation and accessing their prey. They are by far the most abundant seal species in the world. While population estimates are uncertain, there are at least 7 million and possibly as many as 75 million individuals. This success of this species is due to its specialized predation on the abundant Antarctic krill of the Southern Ocean, for which it has uniquely adapted, sieve-like tooth structure. Indeed, its scientific name, translated as "lobe-toothed (lobodon) crab eater (carcinophaga)", refers specifically to the finely lobed teeth adapted to filtering their small crustacean prey.
The leopard seal, also referred to as the sea leopard, is the second largest species of seal in the Antarctic. Its only natural predator is the orca. It feeds on a wide range of prey including cephalopods, other pinnipeds, krill, fish, and birds, particularly penguins. It is the only species in the genus Hydrurga. Its closest relatives are the Ross seal, the crabeater seal and the Weddell seal, which together are known as the tribe of Lobodontini seals. The name hydrurga means "water worker" and leptonyx is the Greek for "thin-clawed".
The sea otter is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between 14 and 45 kg, making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smallest marine mammals. Unlike most marine mammals, the sea otter's primary form of insulation is an exceptionally thick coat of fur, the densest in the animal kingdom. Although it can walk on land, the sea otter is capable of living exclusively in the ocean.
The hooded seal or bladdernose seal is a large phocid found only in the central and western North Atlantic, ranging from Svalbard in the east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the west. The seals are typically silver-grey or white in color, with black spots that vary in size covering most of the body. Hooded seal pups are known as "blue-backs" because their coats are blue-grey on the back with whitish bellies. This coat is shed after 14 months of age when the pups molt. It is the only species in the genus Cystophora.
The northern fur seal is an eared seal found along the north Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk. It is the largest member of the fur seal subfamily (Arctocephalinae) and the only living species in the genus Callorhinus. A single fossil species, Callorhinus gilmorei, is known from the Pliocene of Japan and western North America.
The Weddell seal is a relatively large and abundant true seal with a circumpolar distribution surrounding Antarctica. The Weddell seal was discovered and named in the 1820s during expeditions led by British sealing captain James Weddell to the area of the Southern Ocean now known as the Weddell Sea. The life history of this species is well documented since it occupies fast ice environments close to the Antarctic continent and often adjacent to Antarctic bases. It is the only species in the genus Leptonychotes.
The Alaska SeaLife Center is a public aquarium and Alaska's only permanent marine mammal rehabilitation facility. It is located on the shores of Resurrection Bay in Seward. It opened in May 1998, and is dedicated to understanding and maintaining the integrity of the marine ecosystem of Alaska through research, rehabilitation, conservation, and public education. It is the only facility in the world specifically dedicated to studying the northern marine environment and the only one designed at the outset to combine research with public education and visitor components. The Alaska SeaLife Center generates and shares scientific knowledge to promote understanding and stewardship of Alaska's marine ecosystems.
Ocean Conservancy is a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States. The organization seeks to promote healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems, prevent marine pollution, climate change and advocates against practices that threaten oceanic and human life.
Sea otter conservation began in the early 20th century, when the sea otter was nearly extinct due to large-scale commercial hunting. The sea otter was once abundant in a wide arc across the North Pacific ocean, from northern Japan to Alaska to Mexico. By 1911, hunting for the animal's luxurious fur had reduced the sea otter population to fewer than 2000 individuals in the most remote and inaccessible parts of its range. The IUCN lists the sea otter as an endangered species. Threats to sea otters include oil spills, and a major spill can rapidly kill thousands of the animals.
Hauling out is a behaviour associated with pinnipeds temporarily leaving the water. Hauling-out typically occurs between periods of foraging activity. Rather than remain in the water, pinnipeds haul out onto land or sea ice for reasons such as reproduction and rest. Hauling out is necessary in seals for mating and giving birth. Other benefits of hauling out may include predator avoidance, thermoregulation, social activity, parasite reduction and rest.
Pagophily or pagophilia is the preference or dependence on water ice for some or all activities and functions. The term Pagophila is derived from the Ancient Greek pagos meaning "sea-ice", and philos meaning "-loving".
Bernd Gerhard Würsig is an educator and researcher who works mainly on aspects of behavior and behavioral ecology of whales and dolphins. Much of his early work was done in close collaboration with his wife Melany Ann Würsig, and they have published numerous manuscripts and books together. He is now Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, teaching only occasionally but still involved with graduate student and other research. He is especially active with problems and potential solutions concerning Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, Sousa chinensis, in and surrounding waters of Hong Kong.
Lei Lani Stelle is a professor of biology and chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Redlands.
The physiology of underwater diving is the physiological adaptations to diving of air-breathing vertebrates that have returned to the ocean from terrestrial lineages. They are a diverse group that include sea snakes, sea turtles, the marine iguana, saltwater crocodiles, penguins, pinnipeds, cetaceans, sea otters, manatees and dugongs. All known diving vertebrates dive to feed, and the extent of the diving in terms of depth and duration are influenced by feeding strategies, but also, in some cases, with predator avoidance. Diving behaviour is inextricably linked with the physiological adaptations for diving and often the behaviour leads to an investigation of the physiology that makes the behaviour possible, so they are considered together where possible. Most diving vertebrates make relatively short shallow dives. Sea snakes, crocodiles, and marine iguanas only dive in inshore waters and seldom dive deeper than 10 meters. Some of these groups can make much deeper and longer dives. Emperor penguins regularly dive to depths of 400 to 500 meters for 4 to 5 minutes, often dive for 8 to 12 minutes, and have a maximum endurance of about 22 minutes. Elephant seals stay at sea for between 2 and 8 months and dive continuously, spending 90% of their time underwater and averaging 20 minutes per dive with less than 3 minutes at the surface between dives. Their maximum dive duration is about 2 hours and they routinely feed at depths between 300 and 600 meters, though they can exceed depths of 1,600 meters. Beaked whales have been found to routinely dive to forage at depths between 835 and 1,070 meters, and remain submerged for about 50 minutes. Their maximum recorded depth is 1,888 meters, and the maximum duration is 85 minutes.
Terrie Williams is a marine biologist and ecophysiologist who studies seals, dolphins, whales, and other marine life. She is currently a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Santa Cruz.
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