Understanding the ontogeny of foraging behaviour : insights from combining marine predator bio-logging with satellite-derived oceanography in hidden Markov models
Abstract
The development of foraging strategies that enable juveniles to efficiently identify and exploit predictable habitat features is critical for survival and long-term fitness. In the marine environment, meso- and sub-mesoscale features such as oceanographic fronts offer a visible cue to enhanced foraging conditions, but how individuals learn to identify these features is a mystery. In this study, we investigate age-related differences in the fine-scale foraging behaviour of adult (aged ≥ 5 years) and immature (aged 2-4 years) northern gannets Morus bassanus. Using high-resolution GPS-loggers, we reveal that adults have a much narrower foraging distribution than immature birds and much higher individual foraging site fidelity. By conditioning the transition probabilities of a hidden Markov model on satellite-derived measures of frontal activity, we then demonstrate that adults show a stronger response to frontal activity than immature birds, and are more likely to commence foraging behaviour as frontal intensity increases. Together, these results indicate that adult gannets are more proficient foragers than immatures, supporting the hypothesis that foraging specialisations are learned during individual exploratory behaviour in early life. Such memory-based individual foraging strategies may also explain the extended period of immaturity observed in gannets and many other long-lived species.
Citation
Grecian , W J , Lane , J , Michelot , T , Wade , H M & Hamer , K C 2018 , ' Understanding the ontogeny of foraging behaviour : insights from combining marine predator bio-logging with satellite-derived oceanography in hidden Markov models ' , Journal of the Royal Society Interface , vol. 15 , no. 143 , 20180084 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0084
Publication
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1742-5689Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
This work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.Collections
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