This metadata record supports the following paper (abstract below):

Green, D.B., Bestley, S., McMahon, C.R., Lea, M.A., Harcourt, R.G., Guinet, C. and Hindell, M.A., 2025. Elephant seal dive behaviour responds consistently to changes in foraging success regardless of sex or ocean habitat. PeerJ, 13, p.e20378. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.20378

This metadata record links to a Figshare repository that includes the analysis dataset along with workflows (and a readme) for creating it, running the analyses within the paper, and reproducing the figures.

A complete record of the seal tracking data supporting this study can be found on the IMOS AODN data portal, along with additional data on depth, temperature and salinity collecetd by the seal tags. This can be accessed through the following URL: https://portal.aodn.org.au/search, and selecting the side tabs: "Biological platforms" --> "land-sea mammals"

Paper Abstract

Understanding how air-breathing diving animals moderate their dive behaviour when foraging successfully is foundational in the study of their foraging ecology. Yet, this fundamental relationship remains unresolved with previous research pointing to inconsistent relationships, differing nominally according to sex, habitat type and scale. Empirically testing the relationships between dive effort responses and foraging success is further hampered because of challenges obtaining concurrent measures of behavioural responses and foraging success at sea. We compiled a multi-decadal dive dataset from 609 southern elephant seals, including their dive responses (transit rate, and relative dive and surface recovery duration) and buoyancy – changes in which provide an indirect measure of body condition change and foraging success. Using this dataset, we tested how seal dive behaviour alters when foraging remotely at sea. We found that as foraging success increased, seals increased transit (ascent, descent) rates and decreased relative dive durations for a given depth, with no response in surface recovery. Our results were consistent across sexes and foraging habitats, and account for the general effects of buoyancy on dive behaviour. The homogeneity of these findings suggests that there is a general functional response in which elephant seals perform, on average, shorter, steeper dives during periods of successful foraging. Importantly, we can align these results with predictions from the marginal value theorem (MVT), that a forager should remain in a patch only until gains drop below the neighbourhood mean. Our findings have broad-based implications for how ecologists interpret dive responses of wild marine animals, demonstrating the value of seeking independent in situ information on foraging success.