Isotopic niche partitioning between two apex predators over time by Drago, Massimiliano, Cardona, Luis, Franco Trecu, Valentina, Crespo, Enrique Alberto, Vales, Damián Gustavo, Borella, Florencia, Zenteno, Lisette, Gonzáles, Enrique M., Inchausti, Pablo

“…This recent dietary change of South American fur seals can be explained by at least two non-mutually exclusive mechanisms: (i) the decrease in the abundance of sympatric South American sea lions as a consequence of small colony size and high pup mortality resulting from commercial sealing; and (ii) the decrease in the average size of demersal fishes due to intense fishing of the larger class sizes, which may have increased their accessibility to those eared seals with a smaller mouth gape, i.e., South American fur seals of both sexes and female South American sea lions.…”
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Holocene changes in the trophic ecology of an apex marine predator in the South Atlantic Ocean by Vales, Damián Gustavo, Cardona, Luis, Zangrando, Atilio Francisco Javier, Borella, Florencia, Saporiti, Fabiana, Prosser Goodall, Rae Natalie, Rosa de Oliveira, Larissa, Crespo, Enrique Alberto

“…Stable isotope ratios of nitrogen and carbon in bone collagen have been used to reconstruct the foraging ecology of South American fur seals (Arctocephalus australis) in the southwestern South Atlantic Ocean since the Middle Holocene, a region inhabited by hunter-gatherers by millennia and modified by two centuries of whaling, sealing and fishing. Results suggest that the isotopic niche of fur seals from Patagonia has not changed over the last two millennia (average for the period: δ13C2200-0BP = −13.4 ± 0.5‰, δ15N2200-0BP = 20.6 ± 1.1‰). …”
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