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68 results for “foraging strategy”
Data from: Diversification rates have no effect on the convergent evolution of foraging strategies in the most speciose genus of bats, Myotis
<p>Adaptive radiations are defined as rapid diversification with phenotypic innovation led by colonization to new environments. Notably, adaptive radiations can occur in parallel when habitats with similar selective pressures are accessible promoting convergent adaptions. While convergent evolution appears to be a common process, it is unclear what are the main drivers leading the reappearance of morphologies or ecological roles. We explore this question in <i>Myotis</i> bats, the only Chiropteran genus with a worldwide distribution. Three foraging strategies –gleaning, trawling, and aerial netting– repeatedly evolved in several regions of the world, each linked to characteristic morphologies recognized as ecomorphs. Phylogenomic, morphometric, and comparative approaches were adopted to investigate convergence of such foraging strategies and skull morphology as well as factors that explain diversification rates. Genomic and morphometric data were analyzed from ~80% extant taxa. Results confirm that the ecomorphs evolved multiple times, with trawling evolving more often and foliage gleaning most recently. Skull morphology does not reflect common ancestry, evolves convergently with foraging strategy. While diversification rates have been roughly constant across the genus, speciation rates are area-dependent in taxa with temperate distributions. Results suggest that in this species-rich group of bats, first, stochastic processes have led divergence into multiple lineages. Then, natural selection in similar niches has promoted repeated adaptation of phenotypes and foraging strategies. <i>Myotis</i> bats are thus a remarkable case of ecomorphological convergence and an emerging model system for investigating the genomic basis of parallel adaptive radiation.</p>
Historical baleen plates indicate that once abundant Antarctic blue and fin whales demonstrated distinct migratory and foraging strategies
<p>Southern hemisphere blue (<em>Balaenoptera musculus intermedia</em>) and fin (<em>Balaenoptera physalus</em>) whales are the largest predators in the Southern Ocean, with similarities in morphology and distribution. Yet, understanding of their life history and foraging is limited due to current low abundances and limited ecological data. To address these gaps, historic Antarctic blue (n = 5) and fin (n = 5) whale baleen plates, collected in 1947–1948 and recently rediscovered in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, were analyzed for bulk (δ<sup>13</sup>C and δ<sup>15</sup>N) stable isotopes. Regular oscillations in isotopic ratios, interpreted as annual cycles, revealed that baleen plates contain approximately six years (14.35 ± 1.20 cm yr<sup>–1</sup>) of life history data in blue whales and four years (16.52 ± 1.86 cm yr<sup>–1</sup>) in fin whales. Isotopic results suggest that: 1) in the 1940s, blue and fin whales fed at the same trophic level but in slightly different habitats, 2) fin whales appear to have had more regular annual migrations, and 3) fin whales may have migrated to ecologically distinct sub-Antarctic waters annually while some blue whales may have resided year-round in the Southern Ocean. These results reveal differences in ecological niche and life history strategies between Antarctic blue and fin whales during a period when their populations were more abundant than today, and before major human-driven climatic changes occurred in the Southern Ocean.</p>
Fig. 1 in On The Diet And Foraging Strategy Of Tundra Waders At Sivash
Fig. 1. Map of monitoring areas (shown in circles) where the observations of the wader foraging behaviour were taken.
Data for: Do ectomycorrhizal exploration types reflect mycelial foraging strategies?
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"><span>·<span> </span></span><span>Ectomycorrhizal exploration types are commonly assumed to denote spatial foraging patterns and resource-related niches of extraradical mycelia. However, empirical evidence of the consistency of foraging strategies within exploration types is lacking.</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span>·<span> </span></span><span>Here, we analysed ectomycorrhizal foraging patterns by incubating root-excluding ingrowth mesh bags filled with six different substrates in mature <em>Picea abies </em>forests. High-throughput sequencing was used to characterize ectomycorrhizal fungal communities in the mesh bags and on adjacent fine roots after one growing season.</span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span>·<span> </span></span><span>Contrary to expectations, many ectomycorrhizal genera of exploration types thought to produce little extraradical mycelium colonised ingrowth bags extensively, whereas genera commonly associated with ample mycelial production occurred sparsely in ingrowth bags relative to their abundance on roots. </span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"><span>·<span> </span></span><span>Previous assumptions about soil foraging patterns of exploration types do not seem to hold. Instead, we propose that variation in the proliferation of extraradical mycelium is related to intergeneric differences in mycelial longevity and mobility of targeted resources. </span></p>
Yelkouan shearwater (Puffinus yelkouan) Maltese Islands' colony differences in feather corticosterone, bulk stable isotopes, mercury concentration, adult breeding success and foraging strategies
<p>All data and scripts uploaded and described here are related to the manuscript being submitted under the title: "<span lang="EN-GB">Feather corticosterone and stable isotopes explain fledging and adult breeding success in a burrow-nesting seabird, the Yelkouan shearwater <em>Puffinus yelkouan</em>", accepted for publication in Marine Biology (doi: 10.1007/s00227-025-04748-8).</span></p> <h2><strong><u>Adult Breeding success </u></strong></h2> <p>In the script “YESH_Malta_BreedingSuccess_DSR_Rmark.R” apparent breeding success and daily nest survival rates are estimated for yelkouan shearwater nests in Maltese colonies based on the nest log data found in “BreedingSuccessSummaryData.zip”.</p> <h2><strong><u>Nestling and fledgling feather growth, corticosterone, stable isotopes and mercury</u></strong></h2> <p>The R script “YESH_FeatherGrowth_CORT_SI_Hg_chicks_Malta_Script.R” was written to load, combine and analyse all the data related to measurements of nestling growth, feather corticosterone, bulk stable isotopes and mercury analysis. The folder “YESH_FeatherGrowth_CORT_SI_Hg_chicks_Malta_Data.zip” contains the files with these data as named and loaded in the script. The folder also contains the original outputs from the corticosterone measurements by plate, including standard curves, provided in the subfolder: “CORT_Output_by_plate”. Original outputs as sent from the LIENs laboratory for stable isotopes and mercury can be found in the subfolder “SI_Hg_Outputs”.</p> <h2><strong><u>Adult shearwater tracking data analysis</u></strong></h2> <p>The R script written to analyse gps-logger data is named: “YESH_RM_MJ_ChickRearPeriod_ForagingStrategies.R”</p> <p>Adult yelkouan shearwater gps-logger tracking data during the chick-rearing period from the two colonies compared, Majjistral (MJ) and Rdum tal-Madonna (RM): “YESH_Malta_RM_MJ_ChickRearPeriod.csv”.</p> <p>Apart from the consolidated form the tracking data from the chick-rearing period can be found on BirdLife International Seabird Tracking Database:</p> <p>2012, 2013 & 2014: <a href="https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/836">https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/836</a></p> <p><a href="https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/837">https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/837</a></p> <p><a href="https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/952">https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/952</a></p> <p>2019: <a href="https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/1935">https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/1935</a></p> <p>2021: https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/2223</p> <p>https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/2224</p> <p>2022: <a href="https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/1855">https://data.seabirdtracking.org/dataset/1855</a> </p> <p>“TRACKID_2012_2022_DIAGNOSTICSV3.csv” describes the completeness of tracks based on visual assessment and is loaded during the running of the script.</p> <p>Output shapefiles produced by running the script are provided in the folder: “YESH_RM_MJ_ShapefileOutputs_KDE.zip”.</p> <h2>Acknowledgements and Funding</h2> <p>We are grateful to the German Ornithologists’ Society through which all laboratory analysis was funded with funds from the Ursula Honig estate. Tracking was funded under EU-LIFE+ Malta Seabird Project (LIFE10NAT/MT/090), EU-LIFE Artina (LIFE17 NAT/HR/000594) and EU-LIFE PanPuffinus! (LIFE19 NAT/MT/000982), co-financed respectively by the Maltese Ministry for Sustainable Development, the Environment and Climate Change; Ministry of Education and Employment and Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights. All handling and sampling of shearwaters were carried out under permits from the Environment & Resources Authority (ERA) and the Wild Birds Regulation Unit (WBRU). We thank all staff and volunteers of BirdLife Malta having taken part in fieldwork, and all members of the public who contact us for grounded shearwaters. We are grateful to Gaël Guillou of the platform “Analyses isotopiques” for running the stable isotope analyses and to Maud Brault-Favrou of the platform “Analyses élémentaires” for running Hg analyses, both at the LIENSs laboratory. Thanks are due to the CPER (Contrat de Projet Etat-Région) and the FEDER (Fonds Européen de Développement Régional) for funding the AMA and the IRMS of LIENSs. Contributor PB is an honorary member of the IUF (Institut Universitaire de France). </p>
Data for: Female foraging strategy co-evolve with sexual harassment intensity in the Trinidadian guppy
<p>Sexual harassment is a widespread evolutionary outcome of sexual conflict over mating rates. Male harassment can impose costs on females, and females often change their behaviors to avoid unwanted attention. In Trinidadian guppies (<em>Poecilia reticulata</em>), females experience two potential sources of male harassment: coercive sneak mating behavior (more harmful, and common in high-predation populations) and courtship displays (less harmful, and common in low-predation populations). Here, we tested whether female foraging strategy co-evolves with decreasing levels of male harassment as guppies colonize low-predation environments. We set up outdoor stream mesocosms with ecologically naïve males and females from either a high- or a low-predation population in a 2x2 design and tested whether populations diverge in female response to male harassment. We found that low-predation males used more courtship and fewer sneak tactics than their natural high-predation ancestors. Male sneak behavior reduced female foraging efficiency, and this effect was stronger for high-predation females. We then tested whether a similar pattern evolved in a population where high-predation guppies were artificially introduced to a low-predation habitat 12 years ago. Unexpectedly, the introduced males had evolved decreased courtship and increased sneak tactics. Here, increased male courtship, but not increased sneak behavior, reduced female foraging efficiency, and this effect existed only in the introduced, low-predation population. Altogether, our results suggest that both male mating behaviors harass females to differing degrees; females evolve foraging behavior in response to divergence in male mating strategies, but populations may differ in strategies of enduring or ignoring unwanted attention. </p>
Data for: Do ectomycorrhizal exploration types reflect mycelial foraging strategies?
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Data from: Diversification rates have no effect on the convergent evolution of foraging strategies in the most speciose genus of bats, Myotis
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The interplay of resource availability and parent foraging strategies on juvenile sparrow individual specialization
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Data for: Female foraging strategy co-evolve with sexual harassment intensity in the Trinidadian guppy
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Historical baleen plates indicate that once abundant Antarctic blue and fin whales demonstrated distinct migratory and foraging strategies
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Data from: Multi-species sensory networks and social foraging strategies: Implications for population decline in procellariiform seabirds
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Foraging strategies and lifetime fitness in northern elephant seals
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Singing strategies are linked to perch use on foraging territories in heart-nosed bats
<p>These data include the GPS data of 14 VHF telemetry tracked heart-nosed bats (<em>Cardioderma cor</em>) and associated singing behavior collected during the long dry season (May to October) in Tanzania. These data were used to establish that singing occurs on nighttime foraging areas, and that foraging areas are exclusive and repeatedly used, supporting the hypothesis that <em>C. cor</em> maintain individualistic foraging territories with singing. Times and locations of singing are included in the data set and linked to the GPS waypoints of perches individuals used repeatedly during then 4-6 nights of tracking. GPS data is organized by list of separate waypoints and whether they were used for singing. Furthermore, individuals sit in trees and sing for long stretches of time, and thus these durations were subsampled into 2 minute intervals and associated with the perch location to create a dateset of points for Kernal Density Estimates. Times and perch locations for KDE, including associated singing behavior, are also included. Finally, singing duration of each individual is broken down by perch, night, and hour. Of the 14 tracked individuals, 13 are male (one of which stopped singing soon after tracking commenced) and one is a nonsinging female. </p>
Relative forelimb-hindlimb investment is associated with flight style, foraging strategy, and nestling period, but not nest type
<p>We investigated Dial's 2003 hypothesis that birds that rely more heavily upon flight as their primary mode of locomotion and thus invest more in their forelimbs than hindlimbs will experience selection for smaller body sizes, greater altriciality, and more complex nests. To test this hypothesis, we examined the skeletons of over 2,000 individuals from 313 species representing the majority of avian families and all major branches of the avian tree. We used the lengths of the sternal keel and long bones of the wing relative to the lengths of the leg long bones as an index of relative locomotor investment. We found that locomotor investment was predicted by flight style, foraging method, and length of nestling period, supporting Dial's hypothesis. Soaring birds and birds with more acrobatic flight styles, birds whose foraging methods were heavily reliant upon flight, and whose young spent more time in the nest tended to invest more in their forelimbs relative to hindlimbs. Nest type and body size were not significant predictors of relative forelimb-hindlimb investment, however, suggesting that the relationships among flight style, locomotor investment, and life history are not as tightly intertwined as Dial originally hypothesized.</p>
Sowerby's beaked whale biosonar and movement strategy indicate deep-sea foraging niche differentiation in mesoplodont whales
<p>Closely related species are expected to diverge in foraging strategy, reflecting the evolutionary drive to optimize foraging performance. The most speciose cetacean genus, Mesoplodon, comprises beaked whales with little diversity in external morphology or diet, and overlapping distributions. Moreover, the few studied species of beaked whales (Ziphiidae) show very similar foraging styles with slow, energy-conserving movement during long, deep foraging dives. This raises the question of what factors drive their speciation. Using data from animal-attached tags and aerial imagery, we tested the hypothesis that two similar-sized mesoplodonts, Sowerby's(Mesoplodon bidens) and Blainville's (Mesoplodon densirostris) beaked whales, exploit a similar low-energy niche. We show that, compared with the low-energy strategist Blainville's beaked whale, AQ6 Sowerby's beaked whale lives in the fast lane. While targeting a similar mesopelagic/bathypelagic foraging zone, they consistently swim and hunt faster, perform shorter deep dives, and echolocate at a faster rate and with higher frequency clicks. Further, extensive nearsurface travel between deep dives challenges the interpretation of beaked whale shallow inter-foraging dives as a management strategy for decompression sickness. The distinctively higher frequency echolocation clicks do not hold apparent foraging benefits. Instead, we argue that a high-speed foraging style influences dive duration and echolocation behaviour, enabling access to a distinct prey population. Our results demonstrate that beaked whales exploit a broader diversity of deep-sea foraging and energetic niches than hitherto suspected. The marked deviation of Sowerby's beaked whales from the typical ziphiid foraging strategy has potential implications for their response to anthropogenic sounds, which appears to be strongly behaviourally driven in other ziphiids.</p>
Short-finned pilot whales exhibit behavioral plasticity in foraging strategies mediated by their environment
<p>Predators adapt their foraging behavior to exploit a variety of prey in a range of environments. Short-finned pilot whales are wide-ranging predators in tropical and sub-tropical oceans, but most previous studies of their foraging ecology have been conducted near oceanic islands. We deployed sound and movement recording tags on 43 short-finned pilot whales off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, USA, to measure their foraging behavior in a continental shelf-break ecosystem and investigate how variation in the environment shapes their behavior. Overall, the foraging behavior of pilot whales off Cape Hatteras was similar to that of their counterparts from island-associated habitats. Off Cape Hatteras, pilot whales made foraging dives as deep as 1077 m (mean: 445 m), lasting up to 23 min (mean: 12.8 min), with sprints (pursuit at speeds over 3 m/s and up to 6.9 m/s) in more than half of foraging dives. However, tagged whales off Cape Hatteras produced higher buzz rates (11.3 buzzes/dive), foraged more extensively in daytime hours, and engaged in more frequent benthic foraging than island-associated ecotypes. By parsing the echoic scene generated by the animal's own echolocation clicks, we show that pilot whales off Cape Hatteras frequently exploit bathymetric features for foraging, with benthic dives resulting in higher prey capture attempts than pelagic dives. The ability of these predators to strategically adapt foraging strategies to local habitat features likely contributes to their ecological success and may allow them to adjust to shifts in prey distributions in a rapidly changing Anthropocene ocean.</p>
Root foraging strategies and niche segregation of three Mediterranean shrub species
<p>Shrubs are usually adapted to stressful environments in which soil resources are limited, and thus, roots are fundamental for their biological success. However, root measures are challenging to collect, especially in field conditions and at the individual level. For this study, we collected data on the three-dimensional distribution of fine root biomass of twenty-three individuals belonging to three shrub species in a Mediterranean shrubland in Central Spain: gum rockrose (<em>Cistus ladanifer</em> L.), rosemary (<em>Salvia rosmarinus</em> Schleid.), and hairy-fruited broom (<em>Cytisus striatus</em> [Hill] Rothm). Our goal was to determine the soil-foraging strategies adopted by the plants. We hypothesized that plants would show stabilizing niche differences explaining the high plant biodiversity characteristic of Mediterranean shrublands and that they would follow the game theory model's prediction of exploitative segregation of roots behaving territorially but also over-proliferating roots close to their stem and engaging in a root tragedy of the commons. We found that two-thirds to three-fourths of the biomass was belowground, and the system's productivity was roughly 500-600 g C m-2 y-1. Only rosemary plants competed with neighbors following the exploitative segregation predictions. Broom plants had the shallowest and most widespread root systems but significantly reduced their root range toward competing neighbors. Gum rockrose presented deep, narrow root systems avoiding extensive overlap with neighbors but did not appear to respond to competitive pressure levels. Shrubs appeared to stratify their roots at different soil depths, supporting the niche segregation hypothesis.</p>
Divergent foraging strategies between populations of sympatric matrilineal killer whales
<p>In gregarious species, collective behavior maximizes individual fitness benefits while minimizing costs. Despite the relevance of behavior to conservation, the link between the robustness of behavioral patterns across populations and population health is poorly understood. We studied the collective foraging behavior of two closed, sympatric populations of piscivorous killer whales, leveraging two contemporaneously-collected data sets from suction cup-attached bio-logging tags, to quantify patterns of fine-scale foraging movements and their relationships with demography. We reveal striking plasticity in collective foraging behavior between populations. Prey capture rate and foraging efficiency were greater for males in the endangered Southern Resident (SRKW) population, yet greater for females in the Northern Resident (NRKW) population. The presence of a calf (≤ 3 y) reduced the number of prey captured by adult females in both populations, with the greatest effect in SRKW, in which no mothers with calves captured prey while bearing tags. SRKW adult males with a living mother tended to capture more prey than those whose mother had died, whereas the opposite was true for NRKW adult males. Moreover, males generally tended to forage in areas with deeper bathymetry than females, and SRKW captured prey deeper than NRKW. These population-level differences in sex-specific foraging behavior challenge the existing paradigm that mothers are disproportionate foragers in gregarious killer whales, underscoring that an endangered population is employing a potentially unstable collective foraging strategy mismatched to recovery. Thus, our study provides a mechanistic link between fine-scale, collective foraging behavior and population health in an apex marine predator.</p>
Optimal prey for red fox cubs – an example of dual optimizing foraging strategy in foxes from a dynamic wetland habitat
<p>The red fox (<em>Vulpes</em> <em>vulpes</em>) is the most abundant mesopredator in the Central-European region. Detailed knowledge about their feeding behavior is important both from ecological and wildlife management reasons. Food choices of foxes are poorly predictable in high-biodiversity marshlands. The main aim of our study was to sample parallel the main food-type abundances in the study area and analyze the diet of fox cubs and cohabiting adults across three years during the period of maternal dependence of the cubs. According to the optimal foraging theory, we predicted that the cubs' diet would show higher energy content, would be more varied, and the individual prey species fed to the young would be larger. We analyzed the composition of adult fox and cub fecal samples collected separately around dens in a marshland of western Hungary, May 2014, 2017 and 2020, when the abundance values of main food sources differed. Rodents and waterfowl dominated the diet, but their relative occurrence in the samples showed yearly variations. We found that vixens follow a dual optimizing foraging strategy regarding their provisioning of the cubs and their own diet. Adult foxes optimized their diet according to the actual yearly abundances of their main food sources. Additionally, they preferred prey items that can be consumed at the site of capture (large carrion and small individual prey items). Cubs on the other hand were provisioned with optimal high-energy food, even if those in question became less abundant in that year. Vixens mostly fed to their young either larger rodents and waterfowl, or multiple small rodents at a time – these types of prey are both optimal for transportation as a single load. Providing optimal prey at an early age in a changing environment may contribute to the ecological success of the red fox.</p>
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Allen Brain Atlas
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