Abstract
Finding food is crucial to the survival and reproductive success of individuals. Fidelity to previous profitable foraging sites may bring benefits to individuals as they can allocate more time to foraging rather than searching for prey. We studied how environmental conditions influence when lactating long-nosed fur seals (Arctocephalus forsteri) adopt a risky (low fidelity) or conservative (high fidelity) foraging strategy at two intra-annual temporal scales when foraging in a highly variable oceanic environment. Core foraging areas (CFAs; n = 534; 30 × 30 km cells) of consecutive foraging trips were obtained from geolocation tracks of 12 females from summer to winter in 2016 (n = 5) and 2017 (n = 7). We used the spatial variability (standard deviation) of CFAs between or among oceanic foraging trips as a proxy for individual foraging site fidelity (IFSF). Over the entire oceanic foraging period (n = 12), IFSF in the latitudinal axis increased with stronger sea-surface temperature gradient (SSTgrad), but decreased with greater SSTgrad and sea-surface height gradient variability. Over a period of two consecutive oceanic foraging trips (n = 66), IFSF decreased with greater SSTgrad variability in the earlier foraging trip. LNFS show evidence that they use IFSF as a strategy to potentially optimise food acquisition, and that this behaviour is influenced by mesoscale oceanographic parameters.
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Data availability
The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on a reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported through grants from the Sea World Research and Rescue Foundation, the Holsworth Wildlife and Research Endowment, and the Lirabenda Endowment Fund (issued by the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia). We thank the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources for their logistical support. We are also deeply grateful for the volunteers who assisted us in the fieldwork. All animal handling and experimentation were undertaken with the approval from the Primary Industries and Regions South Australia animal ethics committee (application 32-12), Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (permit A24684) and the University of Tasmania animal ethics committee (permit A0015176). We thank the reviewers for their valuable feedback that helped to improve this manuscript.
Funding
This study was funded by the Sea World Research and Rescue Foundation (SWR/10/2016), the Holsworth Wildlife and Research Endowment (H0023641), and the Lirabenda Endowment Fund (issued by the Field Naturalists Society of South Australia; no Grant Number).
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Foo, D., Hindell, M., McMahon, C. et al. Environmental drivers of oceanic foraging site fidelity in central place foragers. Mar Biol 167, 76 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-020-03685-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-020-03685-y