Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals

Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS ONE
Main Authors: Authier, Matthieu, Bentaleb, Ilham, Ponchon, Aurore, Martin, Céline, Guinet, Christophe
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2012
Subjects:
Research Article
Îles Kerguelen
Kerguelen
Southern Ocean
Elephant Seal
Elephant Seals
Mirounga leonina
Southern Elephant Seal
Southern Elephant Seals
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3323586
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22505993
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032026
Description
Summary:Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurately estimating longevity in wild animals, and of the statistical difficulties in correlating time-varying ecological covariables with a single number (time-to-event). Here we investigated the relationship between foraging strategy and life-span in an elusive and large marine predator: the Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina). Using teeth recovered from dead males on îles Kerguelen, Southern Ocean, we first aged specimens. Then we used stable isotopic measurements of carbon () in dentin to study the effect of foraging location on individual life-span. Using a joint change-point/survival modelling approach which enabled us to describe the ontogenetic trajectory of foraging, we unveiled how a stable foraging strategy developed early in life positively covaried with longevity in male Southern Elephant Seals. Coupled with an appropriate statistical analysis, stable isotopes have the potential to tackle ecological questions of long standing interest but whose answer has been hampered by logistic constraints.

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