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The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size
Understanding the trophic niches of marine apex predators is necessary to understand interactions between species and to achieve sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries management. Here, we review the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios for biting marine mammals inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean to...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8313526/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34312442 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94610-w |
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author | Drago, Massimiliano Signaroli, Marco Valdivia, Meica González, Enrique M. Borrell, Asunción Aguilar, Alex Cardona, Luis |
author_facet | Drago, Massimiliano Signaroli, Marco Valdivia, Meica González, Enrique M. Borrell, Asunción Aguilar, Alex Cardona, Luis |
author_sort | Drago, Massimiliano |
collection | PubMed |
description | Understanding the trophic niches of marine apex predators is necessary to understand interactions between species and to achieve sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries management. Here, we review the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios for biting marine mammals inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean to test the hypothesis that the relative position of each species within the isospace is rather invariant and that common and predictable patterns of resource partitioning exists because of constrains imposed by body size and skull morphology. Furthermore, we analyze in detail two species-rich communities to test the hypotheses that marine mammals are gape limited and that trophic position increases with gape size. The isotopic niches of species were highly consistent across regions and the topology of the community within the isospace was well conserved across the Atlantic Ocean. Furthermore, pinnipeds exhibited a much lower diversity of isotopic niches than odontocetes. Results also revealed body size as a poor predictor of the isotopic niche, a modest role of skull morphology in determining it, no evidence of gape limitation and little overlap in the isotopic niche of sympatric species. The overall evidence suggests limited trophic flexibility for most species and low ecological redundancy, which should be considered for ecosystem-based fisheries management. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8313526 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83135262021-07-27 The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size Drago, Massimiliano Signaroli, Marco Valdivia, Meica González, Enrique M. Borrell, Asunción Aguilar, Alex Cardona, Luis Sci Rep Article Understanding the trophic niches of marine apex predators is necessary to understand interactions between species and to achieve sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries management. Here, we review the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios for biting marine mammals inhabiting the Atlantic Ocean to test the hypothesis that the relative position of each species within the isospace is rather invariant and that common and predictable patterns of resource partitioning exists because of constrains imposed by body size and skull morphology. Furthermore, we analyze in detail two species-rich communities to test the hypotheses that marine mammals are gape limited and that trophic position increases with gape size. The isotopic niches of species were highly consistent across regions and the topology of the community within the isospace was well conserved across the Atlantic Ocean. Furthermore, pinnipeds exhibited a much lower diversity of isotopic niches than odontocetes. Results also revealed body size as a poor predictor of the isotopic niche, a modest role of skull morphology in determining it, no evidence of gape limitation and little overlap in the isotopic niche of sympatric species. The overall evidence suggests limited trophic flexibility for most species and low ecological redundancy, which should be considered for ecosystem-based fisheries management. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8313526/ /pubmed/34312442 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94610-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Drago, Massimiliano Signaroli, Marco Valdivia, Meica González, Enrique M. Borrell, Asunción Aguilar, Alex Cardona, Luis The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title | The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title_full | The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title_fullStr | The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title_full_unstemmed | The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title_short | The isotopic niche of Atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
title_sort | isotopic niche of atlantic, biting marine mammals and its relationship to skull morphology and body size |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8313526/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34312442 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94610-w |
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