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

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Date
26/07/2017
Author
Votier, Stephen C.
Fayet, Annette L.
Bearhop, Stuart
Bodey, Thomas W.
Clark, Bethany L.
Grecian, James
Guilford, Tim
Hamer, Keith C.
Jeglinski, Jana W. E.
Morgan, Greg
Wakefield, Ewan
Patrick, Samantha C.
Keywords
Ecology of individuals
Exploration-refinement foraging hypothesis
Foraging
Foraging specialization
GPS tracking
Seabird
QH301 Biology
GE Environmental Sciences
Medicine(all)
Immunology and Microbiology(all)
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Environmental Science(all)
Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
DAS
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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 exploratory and lacked route or foraging site fidelity. Failed breeders were intermediate: some with strong fidelity, others being more exploratory. Individual foraging specializations were previously thought to arise as a function of heritable phenotypic differences or via social transmission. Our results instead suggest a third alternative—in long-lived species foraging sites are learned during exploratory behaviours early in life, which become canalized with age and experience, and refined where possible— the exploration-refinement foraging hypothesis. We speculate similar patterns may be present in other long-lived species and moreover that long periods of immaturity may be a consequence of such memory-based individual foraging strategies.
Citation
Votier , S C , Fayet , A L , Bearhop , S , Bodey , T W , Clark , B L , Grecian , J , Guilford , T , Hamer , K C , Jeglinski , J W E , Morgan , G , Wakefield , E & Patrick , S C 2017 , ' Effects of age and reproductive status on individual foraging site fidelity in a long-lived marine predator ' , Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , vol. 284 , no. 1859 , 20171068 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1068
Publication
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1068
ISSN
0962-8452
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 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 (Standard grant no. NE/H007466/1; New Investigators grant no. NE/H007466/1) and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Leadership Fellowship by the University of Glasgow to J.W.E.J. Data are available via Dryad (http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8m1nf)
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11413

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