Marine environmental forensics - MASTS Webinar скачать в хорошем качестве

Marine environmental forensics - MASTS Webinar

Marine environmental forensics: disentangling physiological, ecological and environmental signals in stranded cetaceans using paired bulk and biomarker signatures with Dr Clayton Magill, Heriot-Watt University. Wednesday 19 March 2025 Cetacean strandings have been reported in increasing numbers in coastal areas worldwide, causing pervasive scientific concern about their cause(s) with respect to environmental change and human activities. Unsettling as such trends might be, strandings can uniquely provide insights into the distribution of cryptic cetaceans and further offer opportunities to collect biological tissue samples, which then can be used to characterize aspects of behaviour and life history. Yet, the relationships shared between strandings and bioecological factors remain unclear, in large part because of difficulties constraining patterns in animals’ distribution and behaviours in the days, weeks and months prior to stranding. With this in mind, I will discuss how complementary ‘paired’ stable isotope signatures of bulk tissues (HCNS) sampled from cetaceans can be used together with coincident biomarkers (viz. amino- and fatty acids) to reveal insights about the life and times of these charismatic marine mammals and help shed light on strandings’ dynamics. Dr Clayton Magill is an Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry in the Lyell Centre at Heriot-Watt University, where he leads the MAGPIE (Multidisciplinary Geo-energy, Paleoenvironment and Isotope Ecology) team. Dr Magill is a world leader in applied biogeochemical techniques with an emphasis on using paired bulk-molecular signatures to establish a ‘behavioural timeline’ in animals met by untimely deaths. His work has been incorporated into diverse and often surprising policies ranging from marine conservation strategies to conflict-zone revitalization. https://researchportal.hw.ac.uk/en/pe...