Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales
Fear of predation can induce profound changes in the behaviour and physiology of prey species even if predator encounters are infrequent. For echolocating toothed whales, the use of sound to forage exposes them to detection by eavesdropping predators, but while some species exploit social defences o...
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ftcsic:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/346136 2024-06-23T07:57:12+00:00 Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Visser, Fleur Tyack, Peter L Alcazar, Jesús Ruxton, Graeme Arranz, Patricia Madsen, Peter T Johnson, Mark 2020-02-06 http://hdl.handle.net/10261/346136 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85079084239 en eng Nature Publishing Group Scientific reports Publisher's version https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 No Scientific Reports 10: 13 (2020) http://hdl.handle.net/10261/346136 doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 2045-2322 32029750 2-s2.0-85079084239 https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85079084239 open Animal behaviour Behavioural ecology artículo http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 2020 ftcsic https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 2024-05-29T00:06:20Z Fear of predation can induce profound changes in the behaviour and physiology of prey species even if predator encounters are infrequent. For echolocating toothed whales, the use of sound to forage exposes them to detection by eavesdropping predators, but while some species exploit social defences or produce cryptic acoustic signals, deep-diving beaked whales, well known for mass-strandings induced by navy sonar, seem enigmatically defenceless against their main predator, killer whales. Here we test the hypothesis that the stereotyped group diving and vocal behaviour of beaked whales has benefits for abatement of predation risk and thus could have been driven by fear of predation over evolutionary time. Biologging data from 14 Blainville's and 12 Cuvier's beaked whales show that group members have an extreme synchronicity, overlapping vocal foraging time by 98% despite hunting individually, thereby reducing group temporal availability for acoustic detection by killer whales to <25%. Groups also perform a coordinated silent ascent in an unpredictable direction, covering a mean of 1 km horizontal distance from their last vocal position. This tactic sacrifices 35% of foraging time but reduces by an order of magnitude the risk of interception by killer whales. These predator abatement behaviours have likely served beaked whales over millions of years, but may become maladaptive by playing a role in mass strandings induced by man-made predator-like sonar sounds. Thanks also to the Cabildo and the people of El Hierro for their support and to the funding entities for field work and data analysis. Canary Islands: ONR grants N00014-16-1-2973 and N00014-16-1-3017, and the Spanish Central Government Plan Nacional DeepCom CTM2017-88686-P. PLT was supported by ONR grant N00014-18-1-2062 and PLT and MJ acknowledge the support of the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) in the completion of this study. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference ... Article in Journal/Newspaper toothed whales Digital.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) Scientific Reports 10 1 |
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Open Polar |
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Digital.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) |
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language |
English |
topic |
Animal behaviour Behavioural ecology |
spellingShingle |
Animal behaviour Behavioural ecology Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Visser, Fleur Tyack, Peter L Alcazar, Jesús Ruxton, Graeme Arranz, Patricia Madsen, Peter T Johnson, Mark Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
topic_facet |
Animal behaviour Behavioural ecology |
description |
Fear of predation can induce profound changes in the behaviour and physiology of prey species even if predator encounters are infrequent. For echolocating toothed whales, the use of sound to forage exposes them to detection by eavesdropping predators, but while some species exploit social defences or produce cryptic acoustic signals, deep-diving beaked whales, well known for mass-strandings induced by navy sonar, seem enigmatically defenceless against their main predator, killer whales. Here we test the hypothesis that the stereotyped group diving and vocal behaviour of beaked whales has benefits for abatement of predation risk and thus could have been driven by fear of predation over evolutionary time. Biologging data from 14 Blainville's and 12 Cuvier's beaked whales show that group members have an extreme synchronicity, overlapping vocal foraging time by 98% despite hunting individually, thereby reducing group temporal availability for acoustic detection by killer whales to <25%. Groups also perform a coordinated silent ascent in an unpredictable direction, covering a mean of 1 km horizontal distance from their last vocal position. This tactic sacrifices 35% of foraging time but reduces by an order of magnitude the risk of interception by killer whales. These predator abatement behaviours have likely served beaked whales over millions of years, but may become maladaptive by playing a role in mass strandings induced by man-made predator-like sonar sounds. Thanks also to the Cabildo and the people of El Hierro for their support and to the funding entities for field work and data analysis. Canary Islands: ONR grants N00014-16-1-2973 and N00014-16-1-3017, and the Spanish Central Government Plan Nacional DeepCom CTM2017-88686-P. PLT was supported by ONR grant N00014-18-1-2062 and PLT and MJ acknowledge the support of the MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland) in the completion of this study. MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Visser, Fleur Tyack, Peter L Alcazar, Jesús Ruxton, Graeme Arranz, Patricia Madsen, Peter T Johnson, Mark |
author_facet |
Aguilar de Soto, Natacha Visser, Fleur Tyack, Peter L Alcazar, Jesús Ruxton, Graeme Arranz, Patricia Madsen, Peter T Johnson, Mark |
author_sort |
Aguilar de Soto, Natacha |
title |
Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
title_short |
Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
title_full |
Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
title_fullStr |
Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
title_full_unstemmed |
Fear of Killer Whales Drives Extreme Synchrony in Deep Diving Beaked Whales |
title_sort |
fear of killer whales drives extreme synchrony in deep diving beaked whales |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/346136 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85079084239 |
genre |
toothed whales |
genre_facet |
toothed whales |
op_relation |
Scientific reports Publisher's version https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 No Scientific Reports 10: 13 (2020) http://hdl.handle.net/10261/346136 doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 2045-2322 32029750 2-s2.0-85079084239 https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85079084239 |
op_rights |
open |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55911-3 |
container_title |
Scientific Reports |
container_volume |
10 |
container_issue |
1 |
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1802650722990292992 |