Elephant seal dive behaviour responds consistently to changes in foraging success regardless of sex or ocean habitat.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how air-breathing diving animals moderate their dive behaviour when foraging successfully is foundational in the study of their foraging ecology. Yet, this fundamental relationship remains unresolved with previous research pointing to inconsistent relationships, differing nominally according to sex, habitat type and scale. Empirically testing the relationships between dive effort responses and foraging success is further hampered because of challenges obtaining concurrent measures of behavioural responses and foraging success at sea. We compiled a multi-decadal dive dataset from 609 southern elephant seals, including their dive responses (transit rate, and relative dive and surface recovery duration) and buoyancy-changes in which provide an indirect measure of body condition

SUBMITTER: Green DB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12717847 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature