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

THIEBOT, J.B.; ARNOULD, J.; GÓMEZ-LAICH, A.; ITO, K.; KATO, A.; MATTERN, T.; MITAMURA, H.; NODA, T.; POUPART, T.; QUINTANA, F.; ET AL.

Lake Constance

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

Jellyfish and other pelagic gelatinous organisms (?gelata?) are increasinglyperceived as an important, yet poorly-known, component of the marinefood webs. Especially, their significance as prey in the oceans is extremelydifficult to quantify because of methodological challenges to determiningpredation on gelata. Miniaturized animal-borne video data loggers nowenable feeding events to be monitored from a predator?s perspective. Wegathered a substantial video dataset (over 350 hours of exploitablefootage) from 106 individuals spanning four species of non-gelatumspecialistpredators (penguins), across regions of the southern oceans. Wefound nearly 200 cases of targeted attacks on carnivorous gelata by allfour species, at all seven studied localities. Our findings emphasize thatgelata actually represent a widespread, but currently under-representedtrophic link across southern oceans, even for energy-demandingendothermic predators. Modern tools seem key to correctly identifying the niche of gelata.