ArticlePloS one2017
Physiological, morphological, and ecological tradeoffs influence vertical habitat use of deep-diving toothed-whales in the Bahamas.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ecological contexts of diving behavior in Hawaiian false killer whales.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- Estimating energy expenditure of sperm whales living in social units.Conservation physiology · 2026Article
- Long-term monitoring of Ziphius cavirostris behavior using 3D tracking from fixed hydrophone arrays off Southern California.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Naval sonar induces an anaerobic swimming gait in beaked whales.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Long-Term Depth Records of Satellite-Tagged Northern Bottlenose Whales Reveal Extraordinary Dive Capabilities.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Energetic connectivity of diverse elasmobranch populations - implications for ecological resilience.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Vertebral Trabecular Bone Mechanical Properties Vary Among Functional Groups of Cetaceans.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Comparative genomics provides insights into the aquatic adaptations of mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Microarchitecture of cetacean vertebral trabecular bone among swimming modes and diving behaviors.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Depression chains in seafloor of contrasting morphology, Atacama Trench margin: a comment on MarshRoyal Society open science · 2019Article
- Diving behaviour of Cuvier's beaked whales (Royal Society open science · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dive capacity among toothed whales (suborder: Odontoceti) has been shown to generally increase with body mass in a relationship closely linked to the allometric scaling of metabolic rates. However, two odontocete species tagged in this study, the Blainville's beaked whale Mesoplodon densirostris and the Cuvier's beaked whale Ziphius cavirostris, confounded expectations of a simple allometric relationship, with exceptionally long (mean: 46.1 min & 65.4 min) and deep dives (mean: 1129 m & 1179 m), and comparatively small body masses (med.: 842.9 kg & 1556.7 kg). These two species also exhibited exceptionally long recovery periods between successive deep dives, or inter-deep-dive intervals (M. densirostris: med. 62 min; Z. cavirostris: med. 68 min). We examined competing hypotheses to explain observed patterns of vertical habitat use based on body mass, oxygen binding protein concentrations, and inter-deep-dive intervals in an assemblage of five sympatric toothed whales species in the Bahamas. Hypotheses were evaluated using dive data from satellite tags attached to the two beaked whales (M. densirostris, n = 12; Z. cavirostris, n = 7), as well as melon-headed whales Peponocephala electra (n = 13), short-finned pilot whales Globicephala macrorhynchus (n = 15), and sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus (n = 27). Body mass and myoglobin concentration together explained only 36% of the variance in maximum dive durations. The inclusion of inter-deep-dive intervals, substantially improved model fits (R2 = 0.92). This finding supported a hypothesis that beaked whales extend foraging dives by exceeding aerobic dive limits, with the extension of inter-deep-dive intervals corresponding to metabolism of accumulated lactic acid. This inference points to intriguing tradeoffs between body size, access to prey in different depth strata, and time allocation within dive cycles. These tradeoffs and resulting differences in habitat use have important implications for spatial distribution patterns, and relative vulnerabilities to anthropogenic impacts.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.