Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 366, Issue 6471, Pages 1367-+Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aax9044
Keywords
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Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [IOS-1656676, IOS-1656656, OPP-1644209, 07-39483]
- Office of Naval Research [N000141612477, N00014-07-10988, N00014-07-11023, N00014-08-10990, N00014-18-1-2062, 00014-15-1-2553]
- Stanford University
- U.S. Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program [SI-1539]
- MASTS pooling initiative (The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland)
- Scottish Funding Council [HR09011]
- Office of Naval Research (ONR) [N00014-12-1-0410, N000141210417, N00014-15-1-2341, N00014-17-1-2715]
- Danish Council for Independent Research [0602-02271B]
- Dutch Research Council [016.Veni.181.086]
- Carlsberg Foundation
- NOAA Ocean Acoustics Program
- FNU fellowship from the Danish Council for Independent Research
- Sapere Aude Research Talent Award
- Focused on Nature
- National Geographic Society
- FNU large frame grant
- Villum Foundation
- Dansk Akustisk Selskab
- Oticon Foundation
- Dansk Tennis Foundation
- German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) [Z1.2-530/2010/14]
- BfN-Cluster 7 Effects of underwater noise on marine vertebrates
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The largest animals are marine filter feeders, but the underlying mechanism of their large size remains unexplained. We measured feeding performance and prey quality to demonstrate how whale gigantism is driven by the interplay of prey abundance and harvesting mechanisms that increase prey capture rates and energy intake. The foraging efficiency of toothed whales that feed on single prey is constrained by the abundance of large prey, whereas filter-feeding baleen whales seasonally exploit vast swarms of small prey at high efficiencies. Given temporally and spatially aggregated prey, filter feeding provides an evolutionary pathway to extremes in body size that are not available to lineages that must feed on one prey at a time. Maximum size in filter feeders is likely constrained by prey availability across space and time.
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