Jellyfish and other gelata as food for four penguin species - insights from predator-borne videos

JEAN-BAPTISTE THIEBOT; ARNOULD JOHN P.Y.; GÓMEZ-LAICH AGUSTINA; ITO KENTARO; KATO AKITO; MATTERN THOMAS; MITAMURA HIROMICHI ; NODA TAKUJI; POUPART TIMOTHEE; QUINTANA FLAVIO; RACLOT THIERRY; ROPERT-COUDERT Y; SALA, J.E.; SEDDON PHILIP J; SUTTON GRACE J; YODA KEN; TAKAHASHI AKINORI

FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

ECOLOGICAL SOC AMER

Año: 2017

1540-9295

Jellyfish and other pelagic gelatinous organisms (gelata) are increasingly perceived as an important, yet poorly-known, component of the marine food webs. Especially, their significance as prey in the oceans is extremely difficult to quantify because of methodological challenges to determining predation on gelata. 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-gelatum-specialist predators (penguins), across regions of the southern oceans. We found nearly 200 cases of targeted attacks on carnivorous gelata by all four species, at all seven studied localities. Our findings emphasize that gelata actually represent a widespread, but currently under-represented trophic link across southern oceans, even for energy-demanding endothermic predators. Modern tools seem key to correctly identifying the niche of gelata.