Leave or stay? Video-logger revealed foraging efficiency of humpback whales under temporal change in prey density

PLoS One. 2019 Feb 5;14(2):e0211138. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211138. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Central place foraging theory (CPF) has been used to predict the optimal patch residence time for air-breathing marine predators in response to patch quality. Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) forage on densely aggregated prey, which may induce drastic change in prey density in a single feeding event. Thus, the decision whether to leave or stay after each feeding event in a single dive in response to this drastic change, should have a significant effect on prey exploitation efficiency. However, whether humpback whales show adaptive behavior in response to the diminishing prey density in a single dive has been technically difficult to test. Here, we studied the foraging behavior of humpback whales in response to change in prey density in a single dive and calculated the efficiency of each foraging dive using a model based on CPF approach. Using animal-borne accelerometers and video loggers attached to whales, foraging behavior and change in relative prey density in front of the whales were successfully quantified. Results showed diminishing rate of energy intake in consecutive feeding events, and humpback whales efficiently fed by bringing the rate of energy intake close to maximum in a single dive cycle. This video-based method also enabled us to detect the presence of other animals around the tagged whales, showing an interesting trend in behavioral changes where feeding duration was shorter when other animals were present. Our results have introduced a new potential to quantitatively investigate the effect of other animals on free-ranging top predators in the context of optimal foraging theory.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acceleration
  • Animals
  • Diving / physiology
  • Energy Intake
  • Euphausiacea
  • Feeding Behavior / physiology*
  • Food Chain
  • Humpback Whale / physiology*
  • Iceland
  • Models, Biological
  • Population Density
  • Predatory Behavior / physiology*
  • Remote Sensing Technology
  • Shellfish
  • Video Recording

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant number 17H00776 to K.S.); Bio-Logging Science, The University of Tokyo to K.S.; the Japan Science and Technology Agency (grant number JPMJCR11A1 to T.A.); and the University of Iceland’s research fund to M.H.R.; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Bilateral Open Partnership Joint Research Program, to K.S. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.