Difficulties quantifying in situ prey patch quality have limited our understanding of how marine predators respond to variation within and between patches, and throughout their foraging range. In the present study, animal-borne video, GPS, accelerometer and dive behaviour data loggers were used to investigate the fine-scale foraging behaviour of Macaroni penguins ( Eudyptes chrysolophus ) in response to prey type, patch density and temporal variation in diving behaviour. Individuals mainly dived during the day and utilised two strategies, targeting different prey types. Subantarctic krill ( Euphausia vallentini) were consumed during deep dives, while small soft-bodied fish were captured on shallow dives or during the ascent phase of deep dives. Despite breeding in large colonies individuals seemed to be solitary foragers and did not engage with conspecifics in coordinated behaviour as seen in other group foraging penguin species. This potentially reflects the high abundance and low manoeuvrability of krill. Video data were used to validate prey capture signals in accelerometer data and a Support Vector Machine learning algorithm was developed to identify prey captures that occurred throughout the entire foraging trip. Prey capture rates indicated that Macaroni penguins continued to forage beyond the optimal give up time. However, bout-scale analysis revealed individuals terminated diving behaviour for reasons other than patch quality. These findings indicate that individuals make complex foraging decisions in relation to their proximate environment over multiple spatio-temporal scales.

中文翻译：

---

通心粉企鹅的精细觅食努力和效率受猎物类型、斑块密度和时间动态的影响

量化原位猎物斑块质量的困难限制了我们对海洋捕食者如何对斑块内和斑块之间以及整个觅食范围内的变化做出反应的理解。在本研究中，动物传播的视频、GPS、加速度计和潜水行为数据记录器被用来研究通心粉企鹅 (Eudyptes chrysolophus) 的精细觅食行为，以响应猎物类型、斑块密度和潜水行为的时间变化。个体主要在白天潜水并采用两种策略，针对不同的猎物类型。亚南极磷虾（Euphausia vallentini）在深潜期间被食用，而小型软体鱼则在浅潜或深潜的上升阶段被捕获。尽管在大型群体中繁殖，但个体似乎是孤独的觅食者，并没有像其他群体觅食企鹅物种那样以协调行为与同种动物接触。这可能反映了磷虾的高丰度和低可操作性。视频数据用于验证加速度计数据中的猎物捕获信号，并开发了支持向量机学习算法来识别整个觅食之旅中发生的猎物捕获。猎物捕获率表明，通心粉企鹅在超出最佳放弃时间后继续觅食。然而，大规模分析显示，个人因补丁质量以外的原因终止了潜水行为。这些发现表明，个体在多个时空尺度上做出与其邻近环境相关的复杂觅食决定。