Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals
Ontogeny of diving and foraging behavior in marine top predators is poorly understood despite its importance in population recruitment. This lack of knowledge is partly due to the difficulties of monitoring juveniles in the wild, which is linked to high mortality early in life. Pinnipeds are good mo...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6341977 2023-05-15T16:05:22+02:00 Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals Orgeret, Florian Cox, Sam L. Weimerskirch, Henri Guinet, Christophe 2018-12-18 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341977/ https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 en eng John Wiley and Sons Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341977/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 © 2018 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Original Research Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 2019-01-27T01:43:52Z Ontogeny of diving and foraging behavior in marine top predators is poorly understood despite its importance in population recruitment. This lack of knowledge is partly due to the difficulties of monitoring juveniles in the wild, which is linked to high mortality early in life. Pinnipeds are good models for studying the development of foraging behaviors because juveniles are large enough to robustly carry tracking devices for many months. Moreover, parental assistance is absent after a juvenile departs for its first foraging trip, minimizing confounding effects of parental input on the development of foraging skills. In this study, we tracked 20 newly weaned juvenile southern elephant seals from Kerguelen Islands for up to 338 days during their first trip at sea following weaning. We used a new generation of satellite relay tags, which allow for the transmission of dive, accelerometer, and location data. We also monitored, at the same time, nine adult females from the colony during their post‐breeding trips, in order to compare diving and foraging behaviors. Juveniles showed a gradual improvement through time in their foraging skills. Like adults females, they remarkably adjusted their swimming effort according to temporal changes in buoyancy (i.e., a proxy of their body condition). They also did not appear to exceed their aerobic physiological diving limits, although dives were constrained by their smaller size compared to adults. Changes in buoyancy appeared to also influence their decision to either keep foraging or return to land, alongside the duration of their haul outs and choice of foraging habitat (oceanic vs. plateau). Further studies are thus needed to better understand how patterns in juveniles survival, and therefore elephant seal populations, might be affected by their changes in foraging skills and changes in their environmental conditions. Text Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Kerguelen Islands Southern Elephant Seals PubMed Central (PMC) Kerguelen Kerguelen Islands Ecology and Evolution 9 1 223 236 |
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Original Research Orgeret, Florian Cox, Sam L. Weimerskirch, Henri Guinet, Christophe Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
topic_facet |
Original Research |
description |
Ontogeny of diving and foraging behavior in marine top predators is poorly understood despite its importance in population recruitment. This lack of knowledge is partly due to the difficulties of monitoring juveniles in the wild, which is linked to high mortality early in life. Pinnipeds are good models for studying the development of foraging behaviors because juveniles are large enough to robustly carry tracking devices for many months. Moreover, parental assistance is absent after a juvenile departs for its first foraging trip, minimizing confounding effects of parental input on the development of foraging skills. In this study, we tracked 20 newly weaned juvenile southern elephant seals from Kerguelen Islands for up to 338 days during their first trip at sea following weaning. We used a new generation of satellite relay tags, which allow for the transmission of dive, accelerometer, and location data. We also monitored, at the same time, nine adult females from the colony during their post‐breeding trips, in order to compare diving and foraging behaviors. Juveniles showed a gradual improvement through time in their foraging skills. Like adults females, they remarkably adjusted their swimming effort according to temporal changes in buoyancy (i.e., a proxy of their body condition). They also did not appear to exceed their aerobic physiological diving limits, although dives were constrained by their smaller size compared to adults. Changes in buoyancy appeared to also influence their decision to either keep foraging or return to land, alongside the duration of their haul outs and choice of foraging habitat (oceanic vs. plateau). Further studies are thus needed to better understand how patterns in juveniles survival, and therefore elephant seal populations, might be affected by their changes in foraging skills and changes in their environmental conditions. |
format |
Text |
author |
Orgeret, Florian Cox, Sam L. Weimerskirch, Henri Guinet, Christophe |
author_facet |
Orgeret, Florian Cox, Sam L. Weimerskirch, Henri Guinet, Christophe |
author_sort |
Orgeret, Florian |
title |
Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
title_short |
Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
title_full |
Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
title_fullStr |
Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
title_full_unstemmed |
Body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
title_sort |
body condition influences ontogeny of foraging behavior in juvenile southern elephant seals |
publisher |
John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341977/ https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 |
geographic |
Kerguelen Kerguelen Islands |
geographic_facet |
Kerguelen Kerguelen Islands |
genre |
Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Kerguelen Islands Southern Elephant Seals |
genre_facet |
Elephant Seal Elephant Seals Kerguelen Islands Southern Elephant Seals |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341977/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 |
op_rights |
© 2018 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4717 |
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Ecology and Evolution |
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9 |
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1 |
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223 |
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236 |
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1766401265728749568 |