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

ARNOULD, JOHN PY; SALA, JUAN EMILIO; THIEBOT, JEAN-BAPTISTE; ROPERT-COUDERT, YAN; MATTERN, THOMAS; TAKAHASHI, AKINORI

Lago Constanza

Simposio; 6th International Bio-Logging Science Symposium; 2017

Max Planck Institute for Ornithology

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 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. We found 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 southern oceans, even for energy-demanding endothermic predators. Modern tools seem key to correctly identifying the niche of gelata.