Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability
The Wadden Sea has an important role for marine mammals in terms of resting, nursing and foraging. Harbor seal is the most abundant marine mammal species in this area. The use of the food resources of the Wadden Sea by seals is not clear, and previous studies showed that this species can travel kilo...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:4866785 2023-05-15T16:33:08+02:00 Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability de la Vega, Camille Lebreton, Benoit Siebert, Ursula Guillou, Gael Das, Krishna Asmus, Ragnhild Asmus, Harald 2016-05-13 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866785/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27176227 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866785/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27176227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 © 2016 de la Vega et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2016 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 2016-05-22T00:14:05Z The Wadden Sea has an important role for marine mammals in terms of resting, nursing and foraging. Harbor seal is the most abundant marine mammal species in this area. The use of the food resources of the Wadden Sea by seals is not clear, and previous studies showed that this species can travel kilometers away from their haul-outs to forage in the North Sea. In this study, we analyzed the stable isotopes of vibrissae from 23 dead harbor seals found on the island of Sylt to investigate their diet. The predator´s carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions were compared to the compositions of different potential prey items from the Sylt-Rømø Bight and from the North Sea in order to study seasonal pattern in the diet and in the foraging location. In parallel, seasonal variation of abundance and biomass of the potential prey items from the Sylt-Rømø Bight were studied and compare to their contribution to the seal´s diet. The results revealed a change in the seal´s diet from pelagic sources in spring to a benthic based diet in summer, and an increasing use of the North Sea resources in fall and winter in accordance with the seasonal variation of the availability of prey in the Sylt-Rømø Bight. Text harbor seal PubMed Central (PMC) PLOS ONE 11 5 e0155727 |
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Research Article de la Vega, Camille Lebreton, Benoit Siebert, Ursula Guillou, Gael Das, Krishna Asmus, Ragnhild Asmus, Harald Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
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Research Article |
description |
The Wadden Sea has an important role for marine mammals in terms of resting, nursing and foraging. Harbor seal is the most abundant marine mammal species in this area. The use of the food resources of the Wadden Sea by seals is not clear, and previous studies showed that this species can travel kilometers away from their haul-outs to forage in the North Sea. In this study, we analyzed the stable isotopes of vibrissae from 23 dead harbor seals found on the island of Sylt to investigate their diet. The predator´s carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions were compared to the compositions of different potential prey items from the Sylt-Rømø Bight and from the North Sea in order to study seasonal pattern in the diet and in the foraging location. In parallel, seasonal variation of abundance and biomass of the potential prey items from the Sylt-Rømø Bight were studied and compare to their contribution to the seal´s diet. The results revealed a change in the seal´s diet from pelagic sources in spring to a benthic based diet in summer, and an increasing use of the North Sea resources in fall and winter in accordance with the seasonal variation of the availability of prey in the Sylt-Rømø Bight. |
format |
Text |
author |
de la Vega, Camille Lebreton, Benoit Siebert, Ursula Guillou, Gael Das, Krishna Asmus, Ragnhild Asmus, Harald |
author_facet |
de la Vega, Camille Lebreton, Benoit Siebert, Ursula Guillou, Gael Das, Krishna Asmus, Ragnhild Asmus, Harald |
author_sort |
de la Vega, Camille |
title |
Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
title_short |
Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
title_full |
Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
title_fullStr |
Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
title_full_unstemmed |
Seasonal Variation of Harbor Seal's Diet from the Wadden Sea in Relation to Prey Availability |
title_sort |
seasonal variation of harbor seal's diet from the wadden sea in relation to prey availability |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866785/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27176227 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 |
genre |
harbor seal |
genre_facet |
harbor seal |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866785/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27176227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 |
op_rights |
© 2016 de la Vega et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0155727 |
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PLOS ONE |
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11 |
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5 |
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