Sex-specific macronutrient foraging strategies in a highly successful marine predator: the Australasian gannet

摘要

The foraging challenge for predators is to find and capture food with adequate levels of energy and nutrients. Marine predators require particularly sophisticated foraging strategies that enable them to balance self-and off-spring-feeding, and also in many circumstances simultaneously consider the nutritional constraints of their partners. Here we combined the use of dietary analysis, proximate composition and nutritional geometry (right-angled mixture triangle nutritional models) to examine the macronutrient preferences of Australasian gannets (Morus serrator) at Farewell Spit gannetry in New Zealand. Our results showed intra-and inter-specific variation in the protein, lipid and water composition of prey captured by our sample of 111 Australasian gannets. In addition, we observed significant differences in the Australasian gannets' nutritional niche between seasons. We provide evidence of sex-specific macronutrient foraging strategies in a successful marine predator in the wild. We have shown that in spite of fluctuations in the nutritional composition of foods available to Australasian gannets, males consistently capture prey with higher protein-to-lipid ratios and lower lipid-to-water ratios than females. These results aid to better understand the evolutionary relationship between macronutrient selection and sex-specific traits in wild animals. They also suggest an incentive for these predators to combine individually imbalanced but nutritionally complementary foods to achieve dietary balance, further highlighting the likelihood that prey selection is guided by the balance of macronutrients, rather than energy alone.