| mercury concentrations in muscle, brain and bone of western alaskan waterfowl. | total mercury (thg), which includes both inorganic (hg(2+)) and methylmercury (mehg) species, has been reported for seabirds in the north pacific and alaska. for the yup'ik and aleut people of alaska, waterfowl are a small but important seasonal component of the diet, but many alaskan species have not been studied extensively for the presence of mercury. birds are good subjects for examination of mercury concentrations because they feed at different trophic levels, they can be long-lived, and ma ... | 2005 | 16076480 |
| contaminants and sea ducks in alaska and the circumpolar region. | we review nesting sea duck population declines in alaska during recent decades and explore the possibility that contaminants may be implicated. aerial surveys of the surf scoter (melanitta perspicillata), white-winged scoter (m. fusca), black scoter (m. nigra), oldsqaw (clangula hyemalis), spectacled eider (somateria fischeri), and steller's eider (polysticta stellei) show long-term breeding population declines, especially the latter three species. the spectacled eider was recently classified th ... | 1995 | 7556023 |
| coast to coast: high genomic connectivity in north american scoters. | dispersal shapes demographic processes and therefore is fundamental to understanding biological, ecological, and evolutionary processes acting within populations. however, assessing population connectivity in scoters (melanitta sp.) is challenging as these species have large spatial distributions that span remote landscapes, have varying nesting distributions (disjunct vs. continuous), exhibit unknown levels of dispersal, and vary in the timing of the formation of pair bonds (winter vs. fall/spr ... | 2019 | 31380047 |
| detection of wellfleet bay virus antibodies in sea birds of the northeastern united states. | wellfleet bay virus (wfbv) is a recently described orthomyxovirus isolated from the tissues of common eiders (somateria mollissima) collected during recurrent mortality events on cape cod, massachusetts, usa. coastal massachusetts is the only location where disease or mortality associated with this virus has been detected in wild birds, and a previous seroprevalence study found a significantly higher frequency of viral exposure in eiders from this location than from other areas sampled in north ... | 2017 | 28640712 |
| evaluation of harvest and information needs for north american sea ducks. | wildlife managers routinely seek to establish sustainable limits of sport harvest or other regulated forms of take while confronted with considerable uncertainty. a growing body of ecological research focuses on methods to describe and account for uncertainty in management decision-making and to prioritize research and monitoring investments to reduce the most influential uncertainties. we used simulation methods incorporating measures of demographic uncertainty to evaluate risk of overharvest a ... | 2017 | 28419113 |
| distribution patterns of wintering sea ducks in relation to the north atlantic oscillation and local environmental characteristics. | twelve species of north american sea ducks (tribe mergini) winter off the eastern coast of the united states and canada. yet, despite their seasonal proximity to urbanized areas in this region, there is limited information on patterns of wintering sea duck habitat use. it is difficult to gather information on sea ducks because of the relative inaccessibility of their offshore locations, their high degree of mobility, and their aggregated distributions. to characterize environmental conditions th ... | 2010 | 20364388 |
| blood lead levels of wild steller's eiders (polysticta stelleri) and black scoters (melanitta nigra) in alaska using a portable blood lead analyzer. | sea duck populations are declining in alaska. the reasons for the decline are not known; environmental lead exposure is one suspected cause. thirty wild steller's eider ducks (polysticta stelleri) and 40 wild black scoter ducks (melanitta nigra) were tested for blood lead levels using a portable blood lead analyzer (leadcare; esa, inc., chelmsford, massachusetts 01824, usa). sixty-seven and one-tenth percent of the sea ducks had undetectable blood lead levels, 30.0% had values indicating normal ... | 2006 | 17319136 |