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From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds

Nursing influences growth rate and overall health of mammals; however, the behavior is difficult to study in wild cetaceans because it occurs below the surface and can thus be misidentified from surface observations. Nursing has been observed in humpback whales on the breeding and calving grounds, b...

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Autores principales: Tackaberry, Jennifer E., Cade, David E., Goldbogen, Jeremy A., Wiley, David N., Friedlaender, Ari S., Stimpert, Alison K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7060748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32181052
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8538
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author Tackaberry, Jennifer E.
Cade, David E.
Goldbogen, Jeremy A.
Wiley, David N.
Friedlaender, Ari S.
Stimpert, Alison K.
author_facet Tackaberry, Jennifer E.
Cade, David E.
Goldbogen, Jeremy A.
Wiley, David N.
Friedlaender, Ari S.
Stimpert, Alison K.
author_sort Tackaberry, Jennifer E.
collection PubMed
description Nursing influences growth rate and overall health of mammals; however, the behavior is difficult to study in wild cetaceans because it occurs below the surface and can thus be misidentified from surface observations. Nursing has been observed in humpback whales on the breeding and calving grounds, but the behavior remains unstudied on the feeding grounds. We instrumented three dependent calves (four total deployments) with combined video and 3D-accelerometer data loggers (CATS) on two United States feeding grounds to document nursing events. Two associated mothers were also tagged to determine if behavior diagnostic of nursing was evident in the mother’s movement. Animal-borne video was manually analyzed and the average duration of successful nursing events was 23 s (±7 sd, n = 11). Nursing occurred at depths between 4.1–64.4 m (along the seafloor) and in close temporal proximity to foraging events by the mothers, but could not be predicted solely by relative positions of mother and calf. When combining all calf deployments, successful nursing was documented eleven times; totaling only 0.3% of 21.0 hours of video. During nursing events, calves had higher overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) and increased fluke-stroke rate (FSR) compared to non-nursing segments (Mixed effect models, ODBA: F1,107 = 13.57756, p = 0.0004, FSR: F1,107 = 32.31018, p < 0.0001). In contrast, mothers had lower ODBA and reduced FSR during nursing events compared to non-nursing segments. These data provide the first characterization of accelerometer data of humpback whale nursing confirmed by animal-borne video tags and the first analysis of nursing events on feeding grounds. This is an important step in understanding the energetic consequences of lactation while foraging.
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spelling pubmed-70607482020-03-16 From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds Tackaberry, Jennifer E. Cade, David E. Goldbogen, Jeremy A. Wiley, David N. Friedlaender, Ari S. Stimpert, Alison K. PeerJ Animal Behavior Nursing influences growth rate and overall health of mammals; however, the behavior is difficult to study in wild cetaceans because it occurs below the surface and can thus be misidentified from surface observations. Nursing has been observed in humpback whales on the breeding and calving grounds, but the behavior remains unstudied on the feeding grounds. We instrumented three dependent calves (four total deployments) with combined video and 3D-accelerometer data loggers (CATS) on two United States feeding grounds to document nursing events. Two associated mothers were also tagged to determine if behavior diagnostic of nursing was evident in the mother’s movement. Animal-borne video was manually analyzed and the average duration of successful nursing events was 23 s (±7 sd, n = 11). Nursing occurred at depths between 4.1–64.4 m (along the seafloor) and in close temporal proximity to foraging events by the mothers, but could not be predicted solely by relative positions of mother and calf. When combining all calf deployments, successful nursing was documented eleven times; totaling only 0.3% of 21.0 hours of video. During nursing events, calves had higher overall dynamic body acceleration (ODBA) and increased fluke-stroke rate (FSR) compared to non-nursing segments (Mixed effect models, ODBA: F1,107 = 13.57756, p = 0.0004, FSR: F1,107 = 32.31018, p < 0.0001). In contrast, mothers had lower ODBA and reduced FSR during nursing events compared to non-nursing segments. These data provide the first characterization of accelerometer data of humpback whale nursing confirmed by animal-borne video tags and the first analysis of nursing events on feeding grounds. This is an important step in understanding the energetic consequences of lactation while foraging. PeerJ Inc. 2020-03-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7060748/ /pubmed/32181052 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8538 Text en ©2020 Tackaberry et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://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
Tackaberry, Jennifer E.
Cade, David E.
Goldbogen, Jeremy A.
Wiley, David N.
Friedlaender, Ari S.
Stimpert, Alison K.
From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title_full From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title_fullStr From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title_full_unstemmed From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title_short From a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two US feeding grounds
title_sort from a calf’s perspective: humpback whale nursing behavior on two us feeding grounds
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7060748/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32181052
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8538
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