Activity seascapes highlight central place foraging strategies in marine predators that never stop swimming.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Central place foragers (CPF) rest within a central place, and theory predicts that distance of patches from this central place sets the outer limits of the foraging arena. Many marine ectothermic predators behave like CPF animals, but never stop swimming, suggesting that predators will incur 'travelling' costs while resting. Currently, it is unknown how these CPF predators behave or how modulation of behavior contributes to daily energy budgets. We combine acoustic telemetry, multi-sensor loggers, and hidden Markov models (HMMs) to generate 'activity seascapes', which combine space use with patterns of activity, for reef sharks (blacktip reef and grey reef sharks) at an unfished Pacific atoll.

Results

Sharks of both species occupied a central place during the day

SUBMITTER: Papastamatiou YP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6011523 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature