ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2012) — Many
white sharks shift from fish to marine mammals as they mature, but individual
sharks show surprising variability in dietary preferences.
White sharks, the largest predatory
sharks in the ocean, are thought of as apex predators that feed primarily on
seals and sea lions. But a new study by researchers at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, shows surprising variability in the dietary preferences
of individual sharks.
The researchers described their findings
in a paper published online September 28 in PLoS ONE. They analyzed the composition of growth bands in
shark vertebrae to trace variations in diet over a shark's lifetime. Stable
isotopes of carbon and nitrogen incorporated into an animal's tissues serve as
a natural tracer of dietary inputs.
"We did find that white shark diets
changed with age, as expected, but we were surprised that the patterns and
extent of change differed among individuals," said Sora Kim, who led the
study as a UCSC graduate student and is now at the University of Wyoming.
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