Hidden Markov Models Capture Behavioral Responses to Suction-Cup Tag Deployment: A Functional State Approach to...

The biological consequences of behavioral responses to anthropogenic noise depend on context. We explore the links between individual motivation, condition, and external constraints in a concept model and illustrate the use of motivational-behavioral states as a means to quantify the biologically relevant effects of tagging. Behavioral states were estimated from multiple streams of data in a hidden Markov model and used to test the change in foraging effort and the change in energetic success or cost given the effort. The presence of a tag boat elicited a short-term reduction in time spent in foraging states but not for proxies for success or cost within foraging states.