Journal
NATURE
Volume 465, Issue 7301, Pages 1066-1069Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature09116
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Funding
- UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
- Save Our Seas Foundation
- Leverhulme Trust
- UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/21354/2005]
- UK Royal Society
- Fisheries Society of the British Isles
- Udaras na Gaeltachta
- Taighde Mara Teo
- Marine Institute (Ireland)
- Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology
- Shark Foundation Switzerland
- University of Aberdeen
- PADI Project
- Japan Fisheries Agency
- US Tuna Foundation
- Tagging of Pacific Pelagics programme in the Census of Marine Life
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US Department of Commerce) [NA37RJ0199, NA67RJ0154]
- University of Hawaii [NA37RJ0199, NA67RJ0154]
- Royal Society
- Marine Biological Association of the UK
- UK NERC
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/21354/2005] Funding Source: FCT
- NERC [mba010004] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [mba010004] Funding Source: researchfish
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An optimal search theory, the so-called Levy-flight foraging hypothesis(1), predicts that predators should adopt search strategies known as Levy flights where prey is sparse and distributed unpredictably, but that Brownian movement is sufficiently efficient for locating abundant prey(2-4). Empirical studies have generated controversy because the accuracy of statistical methods that have been used to identify Levy behaviour has recently been questioned(5,6). Consequently, whether foragers exhibit Levy flights in the wild remains unclear. Crucially, moreover, it has not been tested whether observed movement patterns across natural landscapes having different expected resource distributions conform to the theory's central predictions. Here we use maximum-likelihood methods to test for Levy patterns in relation to environmental gradients in the largest animal movement data set assembled for this purpose. Strong support was found for Levy search patterns across 14 species of open-ocean predatory fish (sharks, tuna, billfish and ocean sunfish), with some individuals switching between Levy and Brownian movement as they traversed different habitat types. We tested the spatial occurrence of these two principal patterns and found Levy behaviour to be associated with less productive waters (sparser prey) and Brownian movements to be associated with productive shelf or convergence-front habitats (abundant prey). These results are consistent with the Levy-flight foraging hypothesis(1,7), supporting the contention(8,9) that organism search strategies naturally evolved in such a way that they exploit optimal Levy patterns.
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