Animal-borne acoustic transceivers reveal patterns of at-sea associations in an upper-trophic level predator

Damian C. Lidgard, W. Don Bowen, Ian D. Jonsen, Sara J. Iverson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)
65 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Satellite telemetry data have substantially increased our understanding of habitat use and foraging behaviour of upper-trophic marine predators, but fall short of providing an understanding of their social behaviour. We sought to determine whether novel acoustic and archival GPS data could be used to examine at-sea associations among grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) during the fall foraging period. Fifteen grey seals from Sable Island, Canada were deployed with Vemco Mobile Transceivers and Satellite-GPS transmitters in October 2009, 13 of which were recaptured and units retrieved 79±2.3 days later during the following breeding season, December 2009-January 2010. An association between two individuals was defined as a cluster of acoustic detections where the time between detections was <30 min. Bathymetry, travel rate, and behavioural state (slow and fast movement) were determined for each GPS archival point (3.7±0.1 locations recorded per hour). Behavioural state was estimated using a hidden Markov model. All seals had been involved in associations with other instrumented seals while at sea, with a total of 1,872 acoustic detections recorded in 201 associations. The median number of detections per association was 3 (range: 1-151) and the median duration of an association was 0.17 h (range: <0.1-11.3 h). Linear mixed-effects models showed that associations occurred when seals were exhibiting slow movement (0.24±0.01 ms-1) on shallow (53.4±3.7 m) offshore banks where dominant prey is known to occur. These results suggest the occurrence of short-term associations among multiple individuals at foraging grounds and provide new insights into the foraging ecology of this upper-trophic marine predator.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere48962
Pages (from-to)1-8
Number of pages8
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume7
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Nov 2012
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright the Author(s) 2012. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Animal-borne acoustic transceivers reveal patterns of at-sea associations in an upper-trophic level predator'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this