Depredation by killer whales (Orcinus orca) on a blue shark (Prionace glauca) in Northeastern Atlantic
5 pages, 1 table Killer whales (Orcinus orca) consume a wide variety of prey, including marine mammals, tele-ost fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and cephalopods (Ford, 2019). Killer whale populations throughout the world tend to exhibit dietary specialization, feeding selectively upon only a very small...
| Published in: | Aquatic Mammals |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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European Association for Aquatic Mammals
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/227371 https://doi.org/10.1578/AM.46.5.2020.478 |
| Summary: | 5 pages, 1 table Killer whales (Orcinus orca) consume a wide variety of prey, including marine mammals, tele-ost fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and cephalopods (Ford, 2019). Killer whale populations throughout the world tend to exhibit dietary specialization, feeding selectively upon only a very small subset of prey species from the 200 species that they are known to predate (Heimlich-Boran, 1988; Baird etal., 1992; Ford, 2019). These ecological spe-cializations are maintained by their feeding habits and social behavior (e.g., acoustic repertoires), which result in reproductive isolation and, ulti-mately, genetic divergence (Ford & Ellis, 2014). Such ecologically specialized and reproductively isolated populations of killer whales are known as ecotypes. Around the world, 11 ecotypes have been identified: three in the northeastern Pacific, five in the Southern Ocean, and three in the north-eastern Atlantic (de Bruyn etal., 2013; Ford, 2019). These ecotype specializations reflect cul-tural traditions that have evolved over millennia in which feeding behaviors are passed from one gen-eration to the next by social learning (Ford, 2019) GM was supported by PTDC/MAR-BIO/4458/2012, IF/01611/2013, and NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000031 grants Peer reviewed |
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