ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Memory and resource tracking drive blue whale migrations.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 270 citations in OpenAlex.
- The influence of social cues on timing of animal migrations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Pooled it
- Kinematics of gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) foraging on infaunal ghost shrimp (Neotrypaea californiensis).The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Trophic hotspots as a perspective for understanding and managing ecosystem function.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Discrete foraging landscapes support large scale migrations of a marine fish.Movement ecology · 2026Article
- An individual-based model of North Pacific albacore tuna seasonal migratory behaviour and climate sensitivity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Linking a seasonal freshwater prey subsidy to the body condition of an estuarine consumer in a subtropical coastal river.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Experience-based optimal foraging on planktonic prey in Baikal seals.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Novel genomics insights into the molecular evolution of long-distance migratory mammals.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Life in the slowest lane: Feeding allometry lowers metabolic rate scaling in the largest whales.Science advances · 2025Article
- The role of oceanographic scales in shaping highly mobile marine predator distributions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Modelling the influence of environmental factors on the acoustic presence of blue whale populations in the southern Indian Ocean.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The future of baleen whales: Recoveries, environmental constraints, and climate change.Science advances · 2025Review
- It's time to go-Drivers and plasticity of migration phenology in a short-distance migratory ungulate.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Climate change impacts to foraging seascapes for a highly migratory top predator.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Animal culture: conservation in a changing world.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Culture and conservation in baleen whales.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- How resource abundance and resource stochasticity affect organisms' range sizes.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Ecological drivers of movement for two sympatric marine predators in the California current large marine ecosystem.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- Inferring the relative importance of navigation and landscape effects for migratory populations using agent-based models.Ecological modelling · 2025Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In terrestrial systems, the green wave hypothesis posits that migrating animals can enhance foraging opportunities by tracking phenological variation in high-quality forage across space (i.e., "resource waves"). To track resource waves, animals may rely on proximate cues and/or memory of long-term average phenologies. Although there is growing evidence of resource tracking in terrestrial migrants, such drivers remain unevaluated in migratory marine megafauna. Here we present a test of the green wave hypothesis in a marine system. We compare 10 years of blue whale movement data with the timing of the spring phytoplankton bloom resulting in increased prey availability in the California Current Ecosystem, allowing us to investigate resource tracking both contemporaneously (response to proximate cues) and based on climatological conditions (memory) during migrations. Blue whales closely tracked the long-term average phenology of the spring bloom, but did not track contemporaneous green-up. In addition, blue whale foraging locations were characterized by low long-term habitat variability and high long-term productivity compared with contemporaneous measurements. Results indicate that memory of long-term average conditions may have a previously underappreciated role in driving migratory movements of long-lived species in marine systems, and suggest that these animals may struggle to respond to rapid deviations from historical mean environmental conditions. Results further highlight that an ecological theory of migration is conserved across marine and terrestrial systems. Understanding the drivers of animal migration is critical for assessing how environmental changes will affect highly mobile fauna at a global scale.
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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.