31
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Foraging Fidelity as a Recipe for a Long Life: Foraging Strategy and Longevity in Male Southern Elephant Seals

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Identifying individual factors affecting life-span has long been of interest for biologists and demographers: how do some individuals manage to dodge the forces of mortality when the vast majority does not? Answering this question is not straightforward, partly because of the arduous task of accurately estimating longevity in wild animals, and of the statistical difficulties in correlating time-varying ecological covariables with a single number (time-to-event). Here we investigated the relationship between foraging strategy and life-span in an elusive and large marine predator: the Southern Elephant Seal ( Mirounga leonina). Using teeth recovered from dead males on îles Kerguelen, Southern Ocean, we first aged specimens. Then we used stable isotopic measurements of carbon ( ) in dentin to study the effect of foraging location on individual life-span. Using a joint change-point/survival modelling approach which enabled us to describe the ontogenetic trajectory of foraging, we unveiled how a stable foraging strategy developed early in life positively covaried with longevity in male Southern Elephant Seals. Coupled with an appropriate statistical analysis, stable isotopes have the potential to tackle ecological questions of long standing interest but whose answer has been hampered by logistic constraints.

          Related collections

          Most cited references124

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Early development and fitness in birds and mammals.

          Conditions experienced during early development affect survival and reproductive performance in many bird and mammal species. Factors affecting early development can therefore have an important influence both on the optimization of life histories and on population dynamics. The understanding of these evolutionary and dynamic consequences is just starting to emerge.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Preparation and characterization of bone and tooth collagen for isotopic analysis

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Mechanism of carbon isotope fractionation associated with lipid synthesis.

              The low carbon-13/carbon-12 ratio of lipids is shown to result from isotopic fractionation during the oxidation of pyruvate to acetyl coenzyme A. In vitro analysis of the kinetic isotope effects of this reaction indicates that there will be a large, temperature-dependent difference in the carbon-13/carbon-12 ratio between the methyl and carbonyl carbon atoms of acetyl coenzyme A and between those carbon atoms of lipid components which derive from them.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2012
                10 April 2012
                : 7
                : 4
                : e32026
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé, UPR 1934 du CNRS, Villiers-en-Bois, France
                [2 ]École Doctorale Sciences pour l'Environnement Gay Lussac-Université de Poitiers, France
                [3 ]Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution, UMR 5554 du CNRS, Montpellier, France
                [4 ]Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, UMR 5175 du CNRS, Montpellier, France
                Phillip Island Nature Parks, Australia
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: IB CG. Performed the experiments: IB CM AP. Analyzed the data: MA. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: CM IB CG. Wrote the paper: MA IB CG.

                Article
                PONE-D-11-19576
                10.1371/journal.pone.0032026
                3323586
                22505993
                890db22b-13ea-486a-aa2a-37224176436e
                Authier et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 5 October 2011
                : 18 January 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 11
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Ecology
                Marine Ecology
                Marine Biology
                Marine Ecology
                Zoology
                Animal Behavior
                Mammalogy
                Earth Sciences
                Marine and Aquatic Sciences
                Marine Ecology
                Mathematics
                Statistics
                Statistical Methods
                Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Archaeology
                Radioactive Carbon Dating

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article