Introduction to the diets of Dolphins

Hello! This is my first blog post and I’d like to talk about my research I did this summer and how it got me excited for AP biology.

So this summer I was part of an internship at the UC Santa Cruz Long Marine Lab in the Mehta Lab. This internship allowed me to research and look at the diets of marine mammals in the family Delphinidae.

 

The research was conducted to gain more insight into what Delphinidae eat, because eventually the data will contribute to a marine mammal database that has information on diet and all other components of marine mammals’ lives. My mentor had done diet analysis for phocids, and decided that I could undertake the task for other marine mammals, and I chose to do Delphinidae.

 

I was the main researcher on this project, but I was mentored and guided by Sarah Kienle, and Rita Mehta, Chris Law and Vikram Baliga all gave me advice and helped me when needed.

Before I even started looking at diet information, I familiarized myself with Delphinidae and found that not just dolphins are in the family, but also whales such as Killer Whales, Pilot Whales and Right Whale Dolphins. Once I did this, I mined through databases and other works of literature to find all possible diet information on the 39 species of dolphins.

Picture found here

I took the data I found in literature and in papers and calculated the overall diet composition for each dolphin species using an equation. I am not sure if I am allowed to share this data publicly yet, so I’m not going to provide the exact results. However, I will give some basic information on my results. I found that overall, within Delphinidae, the major prey species is Actinopterygii, or ray-finned fishes. Cephalopoda, or squids, are also a large portion of dolphins’ diet. Each specific delphinid species has a different major prey species, however that would be a lot of information and detail for this brief overview.

Picture found here

I’m not going to go into more detail about the results, however, the results are complete and can lead to future studies relating to dietary data. The results will eventually be put up, on a database I believe, however I am not sure how soon or exactly where it will be.

 

The data collected from this project is valuable because it provides insight into what exactly Delphinidae are eating, that means we know what to feed them if they are in captivity and how fluctuations in fish and squid numbers will affect dolphins. Also, by knowing what they eat, we can also look at the morphology of Delphinidae and see how diet and morphology correlate. Finally, by learning what fish Delphinidae eat, scientists can see if the fish being consumed have high levels of mercury or other toxins and eventually see the chain reaction in the food chain. To learn more about dolphin diet and mercury, watch the video below!

 

 

I’m very happy that I got the opportunity to do this research and it really showed me what I’m interested in and what researching involves. I’m looking forward to more research opportunities and chances to work with marine mammals!

 

Pictures from:

The group picture I have permission from Chris Law to use