Top shelf bottom feeders: food provisioning in stingrays

Thesis by publication.Includes bibliographical references.1. The effect of food provisioning on site use in the short-tail stingray -- 2. Social organisation of the short-tail stingray (Bathytoshia brevicaudata) over provisioned food -- Summary -- Appendix.Recreational anglers often discard fish waste back into waterways, yet the effects of incidental provisioning as a result of this activity have not yet been assessed, and are not considered in management. At the Woollamia boat ramp in Jervis Bay, Australia, anglers have provisioned short-tail stingrays since 1985. In Chapter 1, we compared stingray visitation with provisioning activity, which indicated their movements are strongly linked to provisioning. Observations also suggest the area may have reproductive significance to this species. Short-tail stingrays may be capable of complex social behaviours, yet no assessment of their sociality exists. Aggregation at the provisioning site provided an opportunity to study their social behaviour. In Chapter 2, we assessed dyadic agonistic interactions and observed a dominance hierarchy and social network that was reflective of a despotic society, indicating this species is capable of highly complex social behaviour. These stingrays may be at risk of experiencing further negative impacts from provisioning, such as dependency, resulting in reduced fitness. The results of these studies highlight that management of recreational fisheries, with respect to appropriately handling waste and its potential impacts on wildlife, needs to be revised. Our data provide a baseline of effects on which monitoring and management programs can be built.1 online resource (iv, 59 pages : illustrations and maps

Conversations Under the Canopy: Aggregating Juvenile Mangrove Whiprays Actively Produce Sound

New  evidence  from  Magnetic  Island  on  the  Great  Barrier  Reef,  Australia,  shows  that  the  mangrove  whipray  (Urogymnus  granulatus)  can  actively  produce  sounds.  Juvenile  mangrove  whiprays  appear  to  make  loud  clicking  noises  as  an  agonistic display, either to warn off and startle predators or to signal to other nearby juveniles to aggregate in defense. Though it is clear that elasmobranchs (sharks, rays, and skates) can hear and respond to sounds in various ways, until now, there have been no confirmed examples of active sound production by this group in the wild

Datasets and R Code for Social organisation of a short-tail stingray (Bathytoshia brevicaudata) population over provisioned food

Datasets S1-S5 and R Codes S1-S3 are those used to analyse dominance hierarchy and conduct a social network analysis on a group of provisioning short-tail stingrays. These data were collected under approval from the Macquarie University Animal Ethics Committee, under ARA2014/015-7, and NSW DPI Fisheries Scientific Collection Permit P08/0010-4.4. Detailed methods can be found in the original research article: [insert link here]