To understand beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) estuarine use in the Nelson River estuary, southwest Hudson Bay, we recorded and examined beluga movements and habitat associations for the July through August period in 2002-2005. We compared locations of belugas fitted with satellite transmitters ("tags") (2002-2005) and aerial-surveyed (2003 and 2005) belugas for years of differing freshwate...

There has been extensive sea ice loss in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas where two beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) populations occur between July-November. Our goal was to develop population-specific beluga habitat selection models that quantify relative use of sea ice and bathymetric features related to oceanographic processes, which can provide context to the importance of changing sea ice...

Cetaceans are remarkable for exhibiting group-specific behavioral traditions or cultures in several behavioral domains (e.g., calls, behavioral tactics), and the question of whether they can be acquired socially, for example through imitative processes, remains open. Here we used a "Do as other does" paradigm to experimentally study the ability of a beluga to imitate familiar intransitive (body...

an 8-week feeding experiment was carried out on beluga (huso huso) juvenile to evaluate the effects of different levels of fish oil containing n-3 highly unsaturated fatty acids (n-3 hufas) on fish growth and fatty acid composition. the requirements of beluga juvenile for n-3 hufas were studied by feeding fish diets containing six different levels of n-3 hufas ranging from 1.56 to 17.25% (% of ...

A small isolated population of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) that are highly contaminated by pollutants, mostly of industrial origin, resides in the St. Lawrence estuary, Québec, Canada. Overhunting in the first half of the century was the probable cause for this population to dwindle from several thousand animals to the current estimate of 500. The failure of the population to recover ...

effect of different photoperiodic regimes was evaluated on growth performance and survival rate of the beluga ( huso huso ) prelarvae and larvae. newly hatched prelarvae were stored in 5 round fiberglass 500‑l tank with different photoperiod (24l:00d, 18l:06d, 12l:12d, 06l:18 d, 00l:24d) till 50 days post hatch with three replicates. light intensity was 200 lux during the experiment. feeding wa...

Reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) is used for research in gene expression, and it is vital to choose appropriate housekeeping genes (HKGs) as reference genes to obtain correct results. The purpose of this study is to determine stably expressed HKGs in blood of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) that can be the appropriate reference genes in relative quantification in gene expr...

belugais a proof environment that provides a rich sophisticated infrastructure for implementing formal systems based on the logical framework LF together with a first-order reasoning language for implementing inductive proofs about them following the Curry-Howard

Broodstock selection programs are currently underway for sturgeon species. To complement and further these selection programs we need to develop sperm cryopreservation procedures. In the present study, we describe the effects of freezing rate (-10°C, -15°C, -20°C, -30°C and -40°C/min) on gamete quality characteristics (i.e., duration of motility (s), motility percentage (%), ATP content (nmol/1...