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This volume provides comprehensive overviews of each European cetacean species’ biology including palaeontology, physiology, genetics, reproduction and development, ecology, habitat, diet, mortality and age determination. Their economic significance and management, as well as future challenges for research and conservation are also addressed. Each chapter includes a distribution map, a photograph of the animal and key literature. This authoritative volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of Europe is a timely and detailed compilation of all European cetaceans and will appeal to academics, students and professionals in mammal research.
Caroline Weir is a cetacean scientist who has conducted visual (from shore, boat and aerial platforms) and acoustic studies of free-ranging whales, dolphins and porpoises since 1995. Her research interests focus primarily on the distribution and ecology of cetacean species and communities, but additionally include photo-identification work (abundance, movements and social structure), research into cetacean acoustic behaviour, anthropogenic impacts on cetacean species, and environmental compliance relating to marine mammals (for example Marine Protected Areas and mitigation guidelines for minimising human impacts). Most recently her work has particularly focussed on ecological studies of the endangered sei whale in the Falkland Islands and the critically-endangered Atlantic humpback dolphin on the west coast of Africa. She was educated at Sheffield University (BSc Ecology) and the University of Wales, Bangor (MSc Marine Mammal Science), where her academic studies focussed on the schooling behaviour of cetaceans, classification of bottlenose dolphin vocalisations, and analysis of sperm whale codas from the Gulf of Mexico. In 2011, following eight years of cetacean survey work off the west coast of Africa, she completed her PhD (Ecology) at the University of Aberdeen titled "Ecology and conservation of cetaceans in the waters between Angola and the Gulf of Guinea, with focus on the Atlantic humpback dolphin (Sousa teuszii)".
Peter Evans is Director of the national marine environmental research charity, Sea Watch Foundation, and has over 30 years postdoctoral experience working on seabirds and marine mammals mainly in northern European waters. His field research concentrates upon ecological, behavioural and conservation biology studies of cetaceans in UK, particularly harbour porpoises, bottlenose dolphins, Risso’s dolphins, and minke whales. He has published over 200 scientific publications and is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the School of Ocean Sciences, University of Bangor.
Marianne Helene Rasmussen is the director of the Húsavík Research Center at the University of Iceland. The focus of this centre is to conduct research on marine mammals. She started her studies on white-beaked dolphins in Iceland for her Master project and continued to do her PhD about the acoustic communication in white-beaked dolphins. After finishing her PhD she has been involved in research projects about humpback whales, blue whales and killer whales.
