Jean‐Baptiste Thiebot1, John P. Y. Arnould2, Agustina Gómez‐Laich3, Kentaro Ito4, Akiko Kato5, Thomas Mattern6, Hiromichi Mitamura7, Takuji Noda7, Timothée Poupart5,2, Flavio Quintana3, Thierry Raclot8, Yan Ropert‐Coudert5, Juan Emilio Sala3, Philip J. Seddon6, Grace J. Sutton2, Ken Yoda9, Akinori Takahashi4,1
1National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan
2School of Life and Environmental Sciences (Burwood Campus), Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
3Instituto de Biología de Organismos Marinos, IBIOMAR–CONICET, Puerto Madryn, Argentina
4Department of Polar Science, SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Tokyo, Japan
5Centre d’Études Biologiques de Chizé UMR 7372 CNRS et Université de La Rochelle Villiers‐en‐Bois France
6Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
7Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
8Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien – Département Écologie Physiologie et Éthologie Université de Strasbourg – CNRS UMR7178 Strasbourg France
9Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Tóm tắt
Jellyfish and other pelagic gelatinous organisms (“gelata”) are increasingly perceived as an important component of marine food webs but remain poorly understood. Their importance as prey in the oceans is extremely difficult to quantify due in part to methodological challenges in verifying predation on gelatinous structures. Miniaturized animal‐borne video data loggers now enable feeding events to be monitored from a predator's perspective. We gathered a substantial video dataset (over 350 hours of exploitable footage) from 106 individuals spanning four species of non‐gelatinous‐specialist predators (penguins), across regions of the southern oceans (areas south of 30°S). We documented nearly 200 cases of targeted attacks on carnivorous gelata by all four species, at all seven studied localities. Our findings emphasize that gelatinous organisms actually represent a widespread but currently under‐represented trophic link across the southern oceans, even for endothermic predators, which have high energetic demands. The use of modern technological tools, such as animal‐borne video data loggers, will help to correctly identify the ecological niche of gelata.
