Marine Mammals: Evolutionary Biology

Undoubtedly, mammals play an important role in ecosystems by providing essential services such as regulating insect populations, seed dispersal and pollination and act as indicators of general ecosystem health. Despite tremendous advances in our understanding of marine mammals over the past several decades, numerous unanswered questions remain. These include fundamental questions in every biological discipline as well as other areas of science, including basic and applied chemistry and physics. Current studies of marine mammals reflect major improvements in technology, as well as equally large changes in the ocean environment. Human impacts on marine mammals and their environments are ubiquitous; from chemical and noise pollution, to marine debris, prey depletion, and ocean acidification. As a result, no marine mammal populations remain entirely unaffected by human activities. Conservation may be hindered by an inadequate understanding of the behavioral ecology of some of these species. As a result of social structure, social information use, culture, and even behavioral syndromes, marine mammal social groups, and populations can be behaviorally heterogeneous. As a result responses to conservation initiatives, or exploitation, may be complex to predict.

This book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current knowledge of marine mammals with a particular emphasis on their physiological adaptations to the aquatic environment and its implications for the conservation of the numerous species that populate marine ecosystems. The book also focuses on ecology, conservation, population biology and management, behavior, habitat and distribution, genetics, evolution, physiology, anatomy, acoustics, effects of noise and pollution, and new technologies. New data compilations on current species' distributions, ecologies and evolutionary histories now allow an integrated approach to understand this biodiversity. Genetic, ecological, and behavioral factors can all contribute to making small populations particularly vulnerable to extinction. One of the most significant challenges for marine mammal conservation is determining demographically independent conservation units, based on acoustic, taxonomic, genetic, geographic, behavioral, social, or ecological features.