Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night
Herring-eating killer whales debilitate herring with underwater tail slaps and likely herd herring into tighter schools using a feeding-specific low-frequency pulsed call (‘herding’ call). Feeding on herring may be dependent upon daylight, as the whales use their white underside to help herd herring...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5281646 2023-05-15T16:51:01+02:00 Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night Richard, Gaëtan Filatova, Olga A. Samarra, Filipa I. P. Fedutin, Ivan D. Lammers, Marc Miller, Patrick J. 2017-01-30 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281646/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203032 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 en eng Springer Berlin Heidelberg http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281646/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203032 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. CC-BY Original Paper Text 2017 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 2017-02-19T01:03:38Z Herring-eating killer whales debilitate herring with underwater tail slaps and likely herd herring into tighter schools using a feeding-specific low-frequency pulsed call (‘herding’ call). Feeding on herring may be dependent upon daylight, as the whales use their white underside to help herd herring; however, feeding at night has not been investigated. The production of feeding-specific sounds provides an opportunity to use passive acoustic monitoring to investigate feeding behaviour at different times of day. We compared the acoustic behaviour of killer whales between day and night, using an autonomous recorder deployed in Iceland during winter. Based upon acoustic detection of underwater tail slaps used to feed upon herring we found that killer whales fed both at night and day: they spent 50% of their time at night and 73% of daytime feeding. Interestingly, there was a significant diel variation in acoustic behaviour. Herding calls were significantly associated with underwater tail slap rate and were recorded significantly more often at night, suggesting that in low-light conditions killer whales rely more on acoustics to herd herring. Communicative sounds were also related to underwater tail slap rate and produced at different rates during day and night. The capability to adapt feeding behaviour to different light conditions may be particularly relevant for predator species occurring in high latitudes during winter, when light availability is limited. Text Iceland PubMed Central (PMC) Marine Biology 164 2 |
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Original Paper |
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Original Paper Richard, Gaëtan Filatova, Olga A. Samarra, Filipa I. P. Fedutin, Ivan D. Lammers, Marc Miller, Patrick J. Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
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Original Paper |
description |
Herring-eating killer whales debilitate herring with underwater tail slaps and likely herd herring into tighter schools using a feeding-specific low-frequency pulsed call (‘herding’ call). Feeding on herring may be dependent upon daylight, as the whales use their white underside to help herd herring; however, feeding at night has not been investigated. The production of feeding-specific sounds provides an opportunity to use passive acoustic monitoring to investigate feeding behaviour at different times of day. We compared the acoustic behaviour of killer whales between day and night, using an autonomous recorder deployed in Iceland during winter. Based upon acoustic detection of underwater tail slaps used to feed upon herring we found that killer whales fed both at night and day: they spent 50% of their time at night and 73% of daytime feeding. Interestingly, there was a significant diel variation in acoustic behaviour. Herding calls were significantly associated with underwater tail slap rate and were recorded significantly more often at night, suggesting that in low-light conditions killer whales rely more on acoustics to herd herring. Communicative sounds were also related to underwater tail slap rate and produced at different rates during day and night. The capability to adapt feeding behaviour to different light conditions may be particularly relevant for predator species occurring in high latitudes during winter, when light availability is limited. |
format |
Text |
author |
Richard, Gaëtan Filatova, Olga A. Samarra, Filipa I. P. Fedutin, Ivan D. Lammers, Marc Miller, Patrick J. |
author_facet |
Richard, Gaëtan Filatova, Olga A. Samarra, Filipa I. P. Fedutin, Ivan D. Lammers, Marc Miller, Patrick J. |
author_sort |
Richard, Gaëtan |
title |
Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
title_short |
Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
title_full |
Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
title_fullStr |
Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
title_full_unstemmed |
Icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
title_sort |
icelandic herring-eating killer whales feed at night |
publisher |
Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281646/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203032 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5281646/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28203032 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-016-3059-8 |
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Marine Biology |
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164 |
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2 |
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1766041126203031552 |