Effects of age and reproductive status on individual foraging site fidelity in a long-lived marine predator.

ABSTRACT: Individual foraging specializations, where individuals use a small component of the population niche width, are widespread in nature with important ecological and evolutionary implications. In long-lived animals, foraging ability develops with age, but we know little about the ontogeny of individuality in foraging. Here we use precision global positioning system (GPS) loggers to examine how individual foraging site fidelity (IFSF), a common component of foraging specialization, varies between breeders, failed breeders and immatures in a long-lived marine predator-the northern gannet Morus bassanus Breeders (aged 5+) showed strong IFSF: they had similar routes and were faithful to distal points during successive trips. However, centrally placed immatures (aged 2-3) were far more expl

SUBMITTER: Votier SC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5543227 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature