The jellyfish buffet: Jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey
The jellyfish buffet: Jellyfish enhance seabird foraging opportunities by concentrating prey
复制标题
水母自助餐：水母通过集中猎物来增加海鸟的觅食机会
DOI：
10.1098/rsbl.2015.0358
复制
发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Takahashi A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sato N;Kokubun N;Yamamoto Y;Watanuki Y;Kitaysky AS;Takahashi A
据报道，在世界各地的海洋生态系统中，水母生物量很高，但对其生态作用的了解仍处于起步阶段。一般认为，水母通过改变较低的营养途径，对较高营养级的捕食者产生间接的负面影响。然而，水柱中水母的高密度可能会更直接地影响海洋捕食者的觅食行为，这种影响可能并不总是负面的。在这里，我们提出了新的观察潜水海鸟，厚嘴海，喂养的鱼聚集在大型水母的长触角，通过使用小型视频记录器连接到鸟类。我们发现，鸟类遇到了大水母，Chrysaora melanaster，在他们的大部分潜水，通常与水母相关的鱼喂养，并出现专门针对水母与大量的鱼聚集在他们的触手，这表明使用水母可能提供显着的能量效益觅食的海鲈。我们的结论是，水母集中饲料鱼为潜水海鸟提供觅食的机会，水母对海洋生态系统的影响比以前预期的更复杂，可能有利于海鸟。
High levels of jellyfish biomass have been reported in marine ecosystems around the world, but understanding of their ecological role remains in its infancy. Jellyfish are generally thought to have indirect negative impacts on higher trophic-level predators, through changes in lower trophic pathways. However, high densities of jellyfish in the water column may affect the foraging behaviour of marine predators more directly, and the effects may not always be negative. Here, we present novel observations of a diving seabird, the thick-billed murre, feeding on fish aggregating among the long tentacles of large jellyfish, by using small video loggers attached to the birds. We show that the birds encountered large jellyfish,Chrysaora melanaster, during most of their dives, commonly fed on fish associated with jellyfish, and appeared to specifically target jellyfish with a high number of fish aggregating in their tentacles, suggesting the use of jellyfish may provide significant energetic benefits to foraging murres. We conclude that jellyfish provide feeding opportunities for diving seabirds by concentrating forage fish, and that the impacts of jellyfish on marine ecosystems are more complex than previously anticipated and may be beneficial to seabirds.