Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals

Matthieu Authier; Ilham Bentaleb; Aurore Ponchon; Celine Martin; Christophe Guinet

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032026

Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals

Matthieu Authier^*, Ilham Bentaleb, Aurore Ponchon, Celine Martin, Christophe Guinet

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurately estimating longevity in wild animals, and of the statistical difficulties in correlating time-varying ecological covariables with a single number (time-to-event). Here we investigated the relationship between foraging strategy and life-span in an elusive and large marine predator: the Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina). Using teeth recovered from dead males on iles Kerguelen, Southern Ocean, we first aged specimens. Then we used stable isotopic measurements of carbon (delta C-13) in dentin to study the effect of foraging location on individual life-span. Using a joint change-point/survival modelling approach which enabled us to describe the ontogenetic trajectory of foraging, we unveiled how a stable foraging strategy developed early in life positively covaried with longevity in male Southern Elephant Seals. Coupled with an appropriate statistical analysis, stable isotopes have the potential to tackle ecological questions of long standing interest but whose answer has been hampered by logistic constraints.

Original language	English
Article number	32026
Number of pages	11
Journal	PloS ONE
Volume	7
Issue number	4
Early online date	10 Apr 2012
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032026
Publication status	Published - 10 Apr 2012

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank all fieldworkers that have collected data since the first mission on ıles Kerguelen. In particular, the authors would like to thank Nory El-Ksabi and Quentin Delorme. We thank the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris) for kindly providing teeth collected before the population crash. We thank Anne-Cecile Dragon for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and for providing Figure S1. We also thank two anonynous reviewers and the Academic Editor, Andre´ Chiaradia, for constructive comments that greatly improved the manuscript both in content and in form. This is publication ISE-M no. ISEM 2012-012.

Keywords

MULTIVARIATE DATA-ANALYSIS
MIROUNGA-LEONINA L
STABLE-CARBON
INDIVIDUAL FITNESS
DECLINING POPULATION
REGRESSION-MODELS
ISOTOPIC ANALYSIS
LONGITUDINAL DATA
TROPHIC ECOLOGY
FUR SEALS

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1371/journal.pone.0032026Licence: CC BY

Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals
Copyright: 2012 Authier et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 486 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurately estimating longevity in wild animals, and of the statistical difficulties in correlating time-varying ecological covariables with a single number (time-to-event). Here we investigated the relationship between foraging strategy and life-span in an elusive and large marine predator: the Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina). Using teeth recovered from dead males on iles Kerguelen, Southern Ocean, we first aged specimens. Then we used stable isotopic measurements of carbon (delta C-13) in dentin to study the effect of foraging location on individual life-span. Using a joint change-point/survival modelling approach which enabled us to describe the ontogenetic trajectory of foraging, we unveiled how a stable foraging strategy developed early in life positively covaried with longevity in male Southern Elephant Seals. Coupled with an appropriate statistical analysis, stable isotopes have the potential to tackle ecological questions of long standing interest but whose answer has been hampered by logistic constraints.",

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author = "Matthieu Authier and Ilham Bentaleb and Aurore Ponchon and Celine Martin and Christophe Guinet",

note = "Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank all fieldworkers that have collected data since the first mission on ıles Kerguelen. In particular, the authors would like to thank Nory El-Ksabi and Quentin Delorme. We thank the Museum National d{\textquoteright}Histoire Naturelle (Paris) for kindly providing teeth collected before the population crash. We thank Anne-Cecile Dragon for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript and for providing Figure S1. We also thank two anonynous reviewers and the Academic Editor, Andre´ Chiaradia, for constructive comments that greatly improved the manuscript both in content and in form. This is publication ISE-M no. ISEM 2012-012.",

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AU - Martin, Celine

AU - Guinet, Christophe

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AB - Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurately estimating longevity in wild animals, and of the statistical difficulties in correlating time-varying ecological covariables with a single number (time-to-event). Here we investigated the relationship between foraging strategy and life-span in an elusive and large marine predator: the Southern Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina). Using teeth recovered from dead males on iles Kerguelen, Southern Ocean, we first aged specimens. Then we used stable isotopic measurements of carbon (delta C-13) in dentin to study the effect of foraging location on individual life-span. Using a joint change-point/survival modelling approach which enabled us to describe the ontogenetic trajectory of foraging, we unveiled how a stable foraging strategy developed early in life positively covaried with longevity in male Southern Elephant Seals. Coupled with an appropriate statistical analysis, stable isotopes have the potential to tackle ecological questions of long standing interest but whose answer has been hampered by logistic constraints.

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KW - STABLE-CARBON

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KW - REGRESSION-MODELS

KW - ISOTOPIC ANALYSIS

KW - LONGITUDINAL DATA

KW - TROPHIC ECOLOGY

KW - FUR SEALS

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M1 - 32026

ER -

Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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