Scientists can now properly anticipate the diet plans of remote killer whale populations utilizing their blubber fats. Credit: Dr. Rune Dietz from Aarhus University
Opening the Secrets of Killer Whale Diets and Their Role in Climate Change
Killer whale populations are getting into the Arctic, producing major disruptions to an environment already badly impacted by environment modification. A group of researchers from McGill University has discovered new ideas to understand how killer whales affect their environment– by reconstructing their diet plans utilizing the lipids in their blubber.
” Using this analysis, we will better comprehend how their diets change and how they might possibly interfere with Arctic food webs,” said Anaïs Remili, a PhD candidate at McGills Department of Natural Resource Sciences and lead author on the study.
To reconstruct the whales diets, the researchers utilized a design called Quantitative Fatty Acid Signature Analysis (QFASA) using samples from captive killer whales. They determined the fatty acid structure of the wild Greenland killer whales and possible victim species the whales might feed on. Lastly, they used the modeling technique to estimate that the whales mainly eat harp and hooded seals, types that scientists found in a few of the whales stomachs.
By McGill University
May 28, 2022
This brand-new tool has the potential to increase understanding of the diets of killer whales all over the world, and how killer whales might affect Arctic food webs in the future.
Recommendation: “Validation of quantitative fatty acid signature analysis for estimating the diet structure of free-ranging killer whales” by Anaïs Remili, Rune Dietz, Christian Sonne, Sara J. Iverson, Denis Roy, Aqqalu Rosing-Asvid, Haley Land-Miller, Adam F. Pedersen and Melissa A. McKinney, 13 May 2022, Scientific Reports.DOI: 10.1038/ s41598-022-11660-4.