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The jellyfish buffet: jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey.

ABSTRACT: High levels of jellyfish biomass have been reported in marine ecosystems around the world, but understanding of their ecological role remains in its infancy. Jellyfish are generally thought to have indirect negative impacts on higher trophic-level predators, through changes in lower trophic pathways. However, high densities of jellyfish in the water column may affect the foraging behaviour of marine predators more directly, and the effects may not always be negative. Here, we present novel observations of a diving seabird, the thick-billed murre, feeding on fish aggregating among the long tentacles of large jellyfish, by using small video loggers attached to the birds. We show that the birds encountered large jellyfish, Chrysaora melanaster, during most of their dives, commonly fed on fish associated with jellyfish, and appeared to specifically target jellyfish with a high number of fish aggregating in their tentacles, suggesting the use of jellyfish may provide significant energetic benefits to foraging murres. We conclude that jellyfish provide feeding opportunities for diving seabirds by concentrating forage fish, and that the impacts of jellyfish on marine ecosystems are more complex than previously anticipated and may be beneficial to seabirds.

SUBMITTER: Sato NN

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4571674 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The jellyfish buffet: jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey.

Sato Nobuhiko N NN Kokubun Nobuo N Yamamoto Takashi T Watanuki Yutaka Y Kitaysky Alexander S AS Takahashi Akinori A

Biology letters 20150801 8

High levels of jellyfish biomass have been reported in marine ecosystems around the world, but understanding of their ecological role remains in its infancy. Jellyfish are generally thought to have indirect negative impacts on higher trophic-level predators, through changes in lower trophic pathways. However, high densities of jellyfish in the water column may affect the foraging behaviour of marine predators more directly, and the effects may not always be negative. Here, we present novel obser ...[more]

PMID: 26311157

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Project description:Narrow foraging specialization may increase the vulnerability of marine predators to climate change. The red-legged kittiwake (Rissa brevirostris) is endemic to the Bering Sea and has experienced drastic population fluctuations in recent decades, presumably due to climate-driven changes in food resources. Red-legged kittiwakes are presumed to be a nocturnal surface-foraging seabird that feed almost entirely on deep water Myctophidae fishes. However, there is little empirical evidence confirming their nocturnal foraging activity during the breeding season. This study investigated the foraging behavior of red-legged kittiwakes by combining GPS tracking, accelerometry, and dietary analyses at the world's largest breeding colony of red-legged kittiwakes on St. George I. GPS tracking of 5 individuals revealed that 82.5% of non-flight behavior (including foraging and resting) occurred over the ocean basin (bottom depth >1,000 m). Acceleration data from 4 birds showed three types of behaviors during foraging trips: (1) flight, characterized by regular wing flapping, (2) resting on water, characterized by non-active behavior, and (3) foraging, when wing flapping was irregular. The proportions of both foraging and resting behaviors were higher at night (14.1 ± 7.1% and 20.8 ± 14.3%) compared to those during the day (6.5 ± 3.0% and 1.7 ± 2.7%). The mean duration of foraging (2.4 ± 2.9 min) was shorter than that of flight between prey patches (24.2 ± 53.1 min). Dietary analyses confirmed myctophids as the dominant prey (100% by occurrence and 98.4 ± 2.4% by wet-weight). Although the sample size was limited, these results suggest that breeding red-legged kittiwakes concentrated their foraging on myctophids available at the surface during nighttime in deep water regions. We propose that the diel patterns and ephemeral nature of their foraging activity reflected the availability of myctophids. Such foraging specialization may exacerbate the vulnerability of red-legged kittiwakes to climate change in the Bering Sea.

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The jellyfish buffet: jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey.

Publications

The jellyfish buffet: jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey.

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