Social dynamics and individual hunting tactics of white sharks revealed by biologging

Abstract

Social foraging, where animals forage in groups, takes many forms but is less studied in marine predators as measuring social associations in the wild is challenging. We used biologging (activity, cameras and telemetry receivers) sensors to measure social associations and simultaneous behaviour, in white sharks ( Carcharodon carcharias ) off Guadalupe Island, Mexico. Animal-borne telemetry receivers revealed that sharks varied in the number of associations they formed and occurred most often when sharks were swimming in straight paths or when they were turning frequently. While many associations were likely random, there was evidence of some stronger associations. Sharks varied in the depths they used and their activity, with some individuals more active in shallow water while others were more active 200–300 m deep. We propose that white sharks associate with other individuals so they can inadvertently share information on the location or remains of large prey. However, there may be a wide range of individual variability in both behaviour and sociality. Biologging now enables social associations of animals to be measured, concurrent with measures of their behaviour, so that social foraging of large marine predators can be quantified in the wild.

Biologging and Biotelemetry: Tools for Understanding the Lives and Environments of Marine Animals

“…Equipping grey seals with acoustic trans-receivers and satellite transmitters revealed that they are associated with other individual seals while area-restricted searching, suggesting some degree of social foraging (95). By combining trans-receivers with additional sensors (e.g., accelerometers, video cameras), associations can be measured in conjunction with the potential nature of the interactions (e.g., reactions), as demonstrated for some sharks (96,97). To overcome the limitation that trans-receivers must normally be physically recovered, a new system composed of a transreceiver and a satellite transmitter was developed and tested with gray seals (98).…”

Integrating isotopic and nutritional niches reveals multiple dimensions of individual diet specialisation in a marine apex predator

“…These differences could result from resource partitioning (e.g. to mitigate competition; Bolnick et al, 2002; Matich & Heithaus, 2014), or be emergent from intrinsic attributes like hunting mode preferences (Papastamatiou et al, 2022; Towner et al, 2016). Short‐term spatiotemporal heterogeneity in prey availability could also contribute to among‐individual differences, given individuals' tooth files covered subsets (<1 year) of the timescale over which most samples were collected (~5 years), although vertebral SI in white sharks supports the likely long‐term persistence of individual specialisations across varying ecological contexts (Kim et al, 2012).…”

Top predator status and trends: ecological implications, monitoring and mitigation strategies to promote ecosystem-based management

“…Animal-borne electronic devices (Ropert-Coudert and Wilson, 2005) allow the remote collection of a vast array of high-resolution quantitative data on individual distribution, movement, behavior, trophic and social interactions, and internal state (McConnell et al, 1992;Weimerskirch et al, 2012;Watanabe and Takahashi, 2013;Banks et al, 2014;Andrzejaczek et al, 2022;Papastamatiou et al, 2022;Sulikowski and Hammerschlag, 2023;Watanabe and Papastamatiou, 2023). These tools can also be used to estimate atsea species distributions (e.g., Aarts et al, 2008;Louzao et al, 2011c;Carter et al, 2022).…”