Stable isotopes reveal the trophic position and mesopelagic fish diet of female southern elephant seals breeding on the Kerguelen Islands

By Y. Cherel, S. Ducatez, Camille Fontaine, P. Richard, C. Guinet. 2008

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e1dab22208322934dfdee43758cb8327cb1316ab

How researchers see this paper

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In Ecology

1. Y. Cherel
2. Daniel P. Costa
3. C. Guinet
4. R. Phillips
5. P. Richard
6. Frederic Menard
7. B. Popp
8. A. Lorrain

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Y. Cherel
2. Frederic Menard
3. Daniel P. Costa
4. B. Popp
5. A. Atkinson
6. C. Guinet
7. A. Lorrain
8. P. Richard

Citations in the corpus

• Effects of climate change and fisheries bycatch on Southern Ocean seabirds : a review (2012, unknown): “For instance, the lower trophic levels of the Scotia Sea region are dominated by krill (Croxall et al. 1988, Murphy et al. 2007), whereas those of the southern Indian Ocean are dominated by mycto - phids (Pakhomov et al. 1996, Connan et al. 2008, Cherel et al. 2008).”
• Isotopic niches and trophic levels of myctophid fishes and their predators in the Southern Ocean (2010, methodology): “The stable isotope method also allows quantifying trophic levels of consumers and thus comparing taxonomically related and unrelated species within a given ecosystem (Hobson et al. 1994; Pinnegar et al. 2002; Cherel et al. 2008).”
• Unravelling the mysteries of a mesopelagic diet: a large apex predator specializes on small prey (2013, methodology): “Stable isotope analysis on female southern elephant seals, Mirounga leonina, indicates that their offshore prey probably consists mainly of small mesopelagic myctophids (<12 cm) (Cherel et al. 2008).”
• Use of stable isotopes to quantify seasonal changes of trophic niche and levels of population and individual specialisation in seabirds (2010, background): “Isotopic analysis of feathers is beginning to yield important insights into the ecology of birds, including resource partitioning within communities (Cherel et al. 2008b) and determination of migratory connectivity and seasonal interactions (Rubenstein & Hobson 2004).”
• Frequency of Microplastics in Mesopelagic Fishes from the Northwest Atlantic (2018, background): “, 2012) and provide an important food source for many large predators such as dolphins, seals, and tuna as well as sea birds (Cherel et al., 2008; Danielsen et al., 2010; Spitz et al., 2010; Varela et al., 2013).”
• A wolf in sheep"s clothing: carnivory in dominant sea urchins in the Mediterranean (2011, background): “The suitability of stable isotope analysis, and spe - cifically δ15N, for identifying trophic levels in marine ecosystems has been clearly established (e.g. Cherel et al. 2008).”
• Southern elephant seal foraging success in relation to temperature and light conditions: insight into prey distribution (2014, background): “Recent studies suggest that myctophids are likely to represent a major proportion of the SES female diet (Cherel et al. 2008, Bailleul et al. 2010) and 3 of the dominant mycto phid species in the SO (Electrona antarctica, E. calsbergi and Gymnoscopelus nichol - si) have previously been found in…”
• Identifying foraging events in deep diving southern elephant seals, Mirounga leonina, using acceleration data loggers (2013, background): “Recent studies using isotope analyses suggest that female and juvenile elephant seals feed mainly on myctophids and not predominantly on cephalopods as previously assumed (Bailleul et al., 2010; Cherel et al., 2008; Newland et al., 2011).”
• Linking foraging behaviour to physical oceanographic structures: Southern elephant seals and mesoscale eddies east of Kerguelen Islands (2010, background): “Myctophid fish, principal prey for females and young males (Ducatez et al., 2008; Cherel et al., 2008), and euphausiids have been shown to aggregate in the periphery of downwelling structures where high biomass of micronekton and zooplankton is found (Rodhouse et al., 1996; Pakhomov and Froneman,…”
• Food web dynamics in the Scotia Sea in summer: A stable isotope study (2012, result): “This was partly for consistency with other Southern Ocean studies that have used this species as a baseline herbivore (Cherel et al., 2008; Richoux and Froneman, 2009).”
• Trophic niche of squids: Insights from isotopic data in marine systems worldwide (2013, background): “For example, large species such as the colossal squid and the Humboldt squid, which had the greatest BA-dN values, act as top predators in some systems, preying on large fishes and other cephalopods (Cherel et al., 2008; Cheung and Pitcher, 2005; Cisneros-Montemayor, 2007; Hückstädt et al., 2007).”
• Nitrogen and carbon isotope values of individual amino acids: a tool to study foraging ecology of penguins in the Southern Ocean (2009, methodology): “Thus KP should have the highest trophic level (Cherel et al. 2007, 2008) and we therefore predict KP to have the greatest difference between source and trophic amino acid δ 15N values.”
• Feeding ecology of myctophid fishes in the northern Scotia Sea (2009, background): “In the Southern Ocean, myctophids are the primary prey of several important species such as king penguins (Olsson & North 1997), elephant seals (Cherel et al. 2008) and the squid Martialia hyadesi (Rodhouse et al. 1992), and are regionally and seasonally important to many other predators, such as…”