Biology Faculty Articles
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-27-2023
Publication Title
Scientific Reports
ISSN
2045-2322
Volume
13
Issue/No.
1484
Abstract
Foraging behavior and interaction with prey is an integral component of the ecological niche of predators but is inherently difficult to observe for highly mobile animals in the marine environment. Billfishes have been described as energy speculators, expending a large amount of energy foraging, expecting to offset high costs with periodic high energetic gain. Surface-based group feeding of sailfish, Istiophorus platypterus, is commonly observed, yet sailfish are believed to be largely solitary roaming predators with high metabolic requirements, suggesting that individual foraging also represents a major component of predator–prey interactions. Here, we use biologging data and video to examine daily activity levels and foraging behavior, estimate metabolic costs, and document a solitary predation event for a 40 kg sailfish. We estimate a median active metabolic rate of 218.9 ± 70.5 mgO2 kg−1 h−1 which increased to 518.8 ± 586.3 mgO2 kg−1 h−1 during prey pursuit. Assuming a successful predation, we estimate a daily net energy gain of 2.4 MJ (5.1 MJ acquired, 2.7 MJ expended), supporting the energy speculator model. While group hunting may be a common activity used by sailfish to acquire energy, our calculations indicate that opportunistic individual foraging events offer a net energy return that contributes to the fitness of these highly mobile predators.
Additional Comments
Funding was provided by Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, GHOF 2019, Gallo-Dubois Scholarship, Fish Florida Scholarship, Batchelor Foundation, Nova Southeastern University.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
NSUWorks Citation
Logan, Ryan K.; Sarah M. Luongo; Jeremy Vaudo; Bradley M. Wetherbee; and Mahmood Shivji. 2023. "Hunting behavior of a solitary sailfish Istiophorus platypterus and estimated energy gain after prey capture." Scientific Reports 13, (1484). doi:10.1038/s41598-023-28748-0.
ORCID ID
0000-0002-6826-3822
ResearcherID
G-4080-2013
DOI
10.1038/s41598-023-28748-0
Comments
The dataset is available and will be made public upon acceptance at the dryad data repository DOI https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vdncjsxzb. For peer review, the available dataset can be accessed here: https://datadryad.org/stash/share/Pa6OgGCg09sQvgkypSLs6Bc_AeNlUalD4uxMlqNqA0Q.