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Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency
Foraging in the marine environment presents particular challenges for air-breathing predators. Information about prey capture rates, the strategies that diving predators use to maximise prey encounter rates and foraging success are still largely unknown and difficult to observe. As well, with the gr...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168760/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25250211 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.544 |
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author | Chimienti, Marianna Bartoń, Kamil A. Scott, Beth E. Travis, Justin M.J. |
author_facet | Chimienti, Marianna Bartoń, Kamil A. Scott, Beth E. Travis, Justin M.J. |
author_sort | Chimienti, Marianna |
collection | PubMed |
description | Foraging in the marine environment presents particular challenges for air-breathing predators. Information about prey capture rates, the strategies that diving predators use to maximise prey encounter rates and foraging success are still largely unknown and difficult to observe. As well, with the growing awareness of potential climate change impacts and the increasing interest in the development of renewable sources it is unknown how the foraging activity of diving predators such as seabirds will respond to both the presence of underwater structures and the potential corresponding changes in prey distributions. Motivated by this issue we developed a theoretical model to gain general understanding of how the foraging efficiency of diving predators may vary according to landscape structure and foraging strategy. Our theoretical model highlights that animal movements, intervals between prey capture and foraging efficiency are likely to critically depend on the distribution of the prey resource and the size and distribution of introduced underwater structures. For multiple prey loaders, changes in prey distribution affected the searching time necessary to catch a set amount of prey which in turn affected the foraging efficiency. The spatial aggregation of prey around small devices (∼ 9 × 9 m) created a valuable habitat for a successful foraging activity resulting in shorter intervals between prey captures and higher foraging efficiency. The presence of large devices (∼ 24 × 24 m) however represented an obstacle for predator movement, thus increasing the intervals between prey captures. In contrast, for single prey loaders the introduction of spatial aggregation of the resources did not represent an advantage suggesting that their foraging efficiency is more strongly affected by other factors such as the timing to find the first prey item which was found to occur faster in the presence of large devices. The development of this theoretical model represents a useful starting point to understand the energetic reasons for a range of potential predator responses to spatial heterogeneity and environmental uncertainties in terms of search behaviour and predator–prey interactions. We highlight future directions that integrated empirical and modelling studies should take to improve our ability to predict how diving predators will be impacted by the deployment of manmade structures in the marine environment. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4168760 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-41687602014-09-23 Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency Chimienti, Marianna Bartoń, Kamil A. Scott, Beth E. Travis, Justin M.J. PeerJ Animal Behavior Foraging in the marine environment presents particular challenges for air-breathing predators. Information about prey capture rates, the strategies that diving predators use to maximise prey encounter rates and foraging success are still largely unknown and difficult to observe. As well, with the growing awareness of potential climate change impacts and the increasing interest in the development of renewable sources it is unknown how the foraging activity of diving predators such as seabirds will respond to both the presence of underwater structures and the potential corresponding changes in prey distributions. Motivated by this issue we developed a theoretical model to gain general understanding of how the foraging efficiency of diving predators may vary according to landscape structure and foraging strategy. Our theoretical model highlights that animal movements, intervals between prey capture and foraging efficiency are likely to critically depend on the distribution of the prey resource and the size and distribution of introduced underwater structures. For multiple prey loaders, changes in prey distribution affected the searching time necessary to catch a set amount of prey which in turn affected the foraging efficiency. The spatial aggregation of prey around small devices (∼ 9 × 9 m) created a valuable habitat for a successful foraging activity resulting in shorter intervals between prey captures and higher foraging efficiency. The presence of large devices (∼ 24 × 24 m) however represented an obstacle for predator movement, thus increasing the intervals between prey captures. In contrast, for single prey loaders the introduction of spatial aggregation of the resources did not represent an advantage suggesting that their foraging efficiency is more strongly affected by other factors such as the timing to find the first prey item which was found to occur faster in the presence of large devices. The development of this theoretical model represents a useful starting point to understand the energetic reasons for a range of potential predator responses to spatial heterogeneity and environmental uncertainties in terms of search behaviour and predator–prey interactions. We highlight future directions that integrated empirical and modelling studies should take to improve our ability to predict how diving predators will be impacted by the deployment of manmade structures in the marine environment. PeerJ Inc. 2014-09-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4168760/ /pubmed/25250211 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.544 Text en © 2014 Chimienti et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Animal Behavior Chimienti, Marianna Bartoń, Kamil A. Scott, Beth E. Travis, Justin M.J. Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title | Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title_full | Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title_fullStr | Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title_full_unstemmed | Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title_short | Modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
title_sort | modelling foraging movements of diving predators: a theoretical study exploring the effect of heterogeneous landscapes on foraging efficiency |
topic | Animal Behavior |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168760/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25250211 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.544 |
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