Seasonal warming drives epidermal shedding in northern bottlenose whales

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. You must log in to post a comment. There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 2 of this Preprint. Add a Comment You must log in to post a comment. Comments There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article. Animals move for access to better conditions, resources, or mating opportunities. However, evidence from cetaceans suggests that some long-distance travel to warmer waters may be primarily related to physiological maintenance, specifically the shedding of epidermal diatoms and parasites. Here we test this “physiological maintenance hypothesis” for cetacean movement from a new angle, asking whether changes in temperature influence epidermal diatoms (microalgae) in a localized, resident population. We used a long-term dataset of northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus) on the Scotian Shelf to test whether large seasonal changes in sea surface temperature predict levels of diatom coverage. Generalized linear mixed models and generalized additive mixed models showed that a seasonal change in SST from 8° to 21° Celsius was associated with a decrease in diatom coverage from approximately 26% to 11%. We also found that males had slightly less diatom coverage than females overall, though the corresponding effect size was very small. Our results support the hypothesis that sea surface temperature can be a driving factor in the epidermal condition of cetaceans. This is consistent with a growing understanding of links between environmental conditions, movement behaviour, and individual health in wild populations. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2VD28 Integrative Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology movement, health, Physiological Maintenance, diatoms, Northern Bottlenose Whales, cetaceans, hyperoodon ampullatus Published: 2025-10-24 09:32 Last Updated: 2026-03-19 21:14 CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Language: English