Body density of humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae) in feeding aggregations estimated from hydrodynamic gliding performance

PloS One
Tomoko NarazakiPatrick J O Miller

Abstract

Many baleen whales undertake annual fasting and feeding cycles, resulting in substantial changes in their body condition, an important factor affecting fitness. As a measure of lipid-store body condition, tissue density of a few deep diving marine mammals has been estimated using a hydrodynamic glide model of drag and buoyancy forces. Here, we applied the method to shallow-diving humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in North Atlantic and Antarctic feeding aggregations. High-resolution 3-axis acceleration, depth and speed data were collected from 24 whales. Measured values of acceleration during 5 s glides were fitted to a hydrodynamic glide model to estimate unknown parameters (tissue density, drag term and diving gas volume) in a Bayesian framework. Estimated species-average tissue density (1031.6 ± 2.1 kg m-3, ±95% credible interval) indicates that humpback whale tissue is typically negatively buoyant although there was a large inter-individual variation ranging from 1025.2 to 1043.1 kg m-3. The precision of the individual estimates was substantially finer than the variation across different individual whales, demonstrating a progressive decrease in tissue density throughout the feeding season and comparably high lipid-st...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 27, 2020·The Journal of Experimental Biology·Andreas FahlmanPatrick Miller
Jul 2, 2020·Ecology and Evolution·Juliana Castrillon, Susan Bengtson Nash
Dec 2, 2020·The Anatomical Record : Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology·Asier LarramendiShu-Yu Hsu
Jun 15, 2021·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Cassondra L Williams, Paul J Ponganis
Jun 29, 2021·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Kagari AokiKentaro Q Sakamoto

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