How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate
Understanding the diving behaviour of diving predators in relation to concomitant prey distribution could have major practical applications in conservation biology by allowing the assessment of how changes in fine scale prey distribution impact foraging efficiency and ultimately population dynamics....
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5156345 2023-05-15T16:05:23+02:00 How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate Le Bras, Yves Jouma’a, Joffrey Picard, Baptiste Guinet, Christophe 2016-12-14 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5156345/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27973587 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167226 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5156345/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27973587 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167226 © 2016 Le Bras 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.0167226 2017-01-01T01:03:05Z Understanding the diving behaviour of diving predators in relation to concomitant prey distribution could have major practical applications in conservation biology by allowing the assessment of how changes in fine scale prey distribution impact foraging efficiency and ultimately population dynamics. The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina, hereafter SES), the largest phocid, is a major predator of the southern ocean feeding on myctophids and cephalopods. Because of its large size it can carry bio-loggers with minimal disturbance. Moreover, it has great diving abilities and a wide foraging habitat. Thus, the SES is a well suited model species to study predator diving behaviour and the distribution of ecologically important prey species in the Southern Ocean. In this study, we examined how SESs adjust their diving behaviour and horizontal movements in response to fine scale prey encounter densities using high resolution accelerometers, magnetometers, pressure sensors and GPS loggers. When high prey encounter rates were encountered, animals responded by (1) diving and returning to the surface with steeper angles, reducing the duration of transit dive phases (thus improving dive efficiency), and (2) exhibiting more horizontally and vertically sinuous bottom phases. In these cases, the distance travelled horizontally at the surface was reduced. This behaviour is likely to counteract horizontal displacement from water currents, as they try to remain within favourable prey patches. The prey encounter rate at the bottom of dives decreased with increasing diving depth, suggesting a combined effect of decreased accessibility and prey density with increasing depth. Prey encounter rate also decreased when the bottom phases of dives were spread across larger vertical extents of the water column. This result suggests that the vertical aggregation of prey can regulate prey density, and as a consequence impact the foraging success of SESs. To our knowledge, this is one of only a handful of studies showing how the vertical ... Text Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean PubMed Central (PMC) Southern Ocean PLOS ONE 11 12 e0167226 |
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Research Article Le Bras, Yves Jouma’a, Joffrey Picard, Baptiste Guinet, Christophe How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
topic_facet |
Research Article |
description |
Understanding the diving behaviour of diving predators in relation to concomitant prey distribution could have major practical applications in conservation biology by allowing the assessment of how changes in fine scale prey distribution impact foraging efficiency and ultimately population dynamics. The southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina, hereafter SES), the largest phocid, is a major predator of the southern ocean feeding on myctophids and cephalopods. Because of its large size it can carry bio-loggers with minimal disturbance. Moreover, it has great diving abilities and a wide foraging habitat. Thus, the SES is a well suited model species to study predator diving behaviour and the distribution of ecologically important prey species in the Southern Ocean. In this study, we examined how SESs adjust their diving behaviour and horizontal movements in response to fine scale prey encounter densities using high resolution accelerometers, magnetometers, pressure sensors and GPS loggers. When high prey encounter rates were encountered, animals responded by (1) diving and returning to the surface with steeper angles, reducing the duration of transit dive phases (thus improving dive efficiency), and (2) exhibiting more horizontally and vertically sinuous bottom phases. In these cases, the distance travelled horizontally at the surface was reduced. This behaviour is likely to counteract horizontal displacement from water currents, as they try to remain within favourable prey patches. The prey encounter rate at the bottom of dives decreased with increasing diving depth, suggesting a combined effect of decreased accessibility and prey density with increasing depth. Prey encounter rate also decreased when the bottom phases of dives were spread across larger vertical extents of the water column. This result suggests that the vertical aggregation of prey can regulate prey density, and as a consequence impact the foraging success of SESs. To our knowledge, this is one of only a handful of studies showing how the vertical ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Le Bras, Yves Jouma’a, Joffrey Picard, Baptiste Guinet, Christophe |
author_facet |
Le Bras, Yves Jouma’a, Joffrey Picard, Baptiste Guinet, Christophe |
author_sort |
Le Bras, Yves |
title |
How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
title_short |
How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
title_full |
How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
title_fullStr |
How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
title_full_unstemmed |
How Elephant Seals (Mirounga leonina) Adjust Their Fine Scale Horizontal Movement and Diving Behaviour in Relation to Prey Encounter Rate |
title_sort |
how elephant seals (mirounga leonina) adjust their fine scale horizontal movement and diving behaviour in relation to prey encounter rate |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5156345/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27973587 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167226 |
geographic |
Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Southern Ocean |
genre |
Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Mirounga leonina Southern Elephant Seal Southern Ocean |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5156345/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27973587 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167226 |
op_rights |
© 2016 Le Bras 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.0167226 |
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PLOS ONE |
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11 |
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12 |
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e0167226 |
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