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Deep-diving beaked whales dive together but forage apart

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  • Jesús Alcázar-Treviño, University of La Laguna
    • ,
  • Mark Johnson
  • Patricia Arranz, University of La Laguna, University of St Andrews
    • ,
  • Victoria E. Warren, The University of Auckland
    • ,
  • Carlos J. Pérez-González, University of La Laguna
    • ,
  • Tiago Marques, University of St Andrews, University of Lisbon
    • ,
  • Peter T. Madsen
  • Natacha Aguilar De Soto, University of La Laguna

Echolocating animals that forage in social groups can potentially benefit from eavesdropping on other group members, cooperative foraging or social defence, but may also face problems of acoustic interference and intra-group competition for prey. Here, we investigate these potential trade-offs of sociality for extreme deep-diving Blainville′s and Cuvier's beaked whales. These species perform highly synchronous group dives as a presumed predator-avoidance behaviour, but the benefits and costs of this on foraging have not been investigated. We show that group members could hear their companions for a median of at least 91% of the vocal foraging phase of their dives. This enables whales to coordinate their mean travel direction despite differing individual headings as they pursue prey on a minute-by-minute basis. While beaked whales coordinate their echolocation-based foraging periods tightly, individual click and buzz rates are both independent of the number of whales in the group. Thus, their foraging performance is not affected by intra-group competition or interference from group members, and they do not seem to capitalize directly on eavesdropping on the echoes produced by the echolocation clicks of their companions. We conclude that the close diving and vocal synchronization of beaked whale groups that quantitatively reduces predation risk has little impact on foraging performance.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummer20201905
TidsskriftProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Vol/bind288
Nummer1942
ISSN0962-8452
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 13 jan. 2021

Bibliografisk note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s).

Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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