Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cooperative Feeding In Common Dolphins As Suggested By Ontogenetic Patterns In Δ15N Bulk And Amino Acids, Rocio I. Ruiz-Cooley, Tim Gerrodette, Susan Chivers, Kerri Danil

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

1. Understanding the effect of stage-specific traits on species feeding habits can reveal how natural selection shapes life strategies. Amino acid (AA) nitrogen stable isotopes (δ¹⁵N) provide multiple proxies of habitat baseline values and diet that can improve our understanding of species feeding strategies relative to their animal metabolism. We evaluated the effect of body length as a proxy for life stage and sex on the feeding habits of the common dolphin Delphinus delphis delphis using δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N in bulk tissue and AAs δ¹⁵N from skin samples collected for almost two …