eCite Digital Repository
Stranded dolphin stomach contents represent the free-ranging population's diet
Citation
Dunshea, GJ and Barros, NB and Berens McCabe, EJ and Gales, N and Hindell, MA and Jarman, S and Wells, RS, Stranded dolphin stomach contents represent the free-ranging population's diet, Biology Letters, 9, (3) Article 20121036. ISSN 1744-9561 (2013) [Refereed Article]
 | PDF 456Kb |
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2013 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
DOI: doi:10.1098/rsbl.2012.1036
Abstract
Diet is a fundamental aspect of animal ecology. Cetacean prey species are generally
identified by examining stomach contents of stranded individuals. Critical
uncertainty in these studies is whether samples from stranded animals are representative
of the diet of free-ranging animals. Over two summers, we collected
faecal and gastric samples from healthy free-ranging individuals of an extensively
studied bottlenose dolphin population. These samples were analysed by
molecular prey detection and these data compared with stomach contents data
derived from stranded dolphins from the same population collected over 22
years. There was a remarkable consistency in the prey species composition and
relative amounts between the two datasets. The conclusions of past stomach contents
studies regarding dolphin habitat associations, prey selection and proposed
foraging mechanisms are supported bymolecular data fromlive animals and the
combined dataset. This is the first explicit test of the validity of stomach contents
analysis for accurate population-scale diet determination of an inshore cetacean.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | DNA-based, PCR, Sarasota, foraging |
| Research Division: | Biological Sciences |
| Research Group: | Ecology |
| Research Field: | Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) |
| Objective Division: | Environmental Management |
| Objective Group: | Coastal and estuarine systems and management |
| Objective Field: | Assessment and management of coastal and estuarine ecosystems |
| UTAS Author: | Dunshea, GJ (Mr Glenn Dunshea) |
| UTAS Author: | Hindell, MA (Professor Mark Hindell) |
| ID Code: | 89027 |
| Year Published: | 2013 |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 38 |
| Deposited By: | IMAS Research and Education Centre |
| Deposited On: | 2014-02-24 |
| Last Modified: | 2017-10-31 |
| Downloads: | 377 View Download Statistics |
Repository Staff Only: item control page