How solitary are white sharks: social interactions or just spatial proximity?

摘要: White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are circumglobally distributed large apex predators. While ecologically important, there is very limited study of their social behaviour. Although evident in other large, marine predators (e.g. toothed whales) and smaller elasmobranchs blacktip reef sharks), the ability any pelagic elasmobranch to demonstrate preferences, tolerance or grouping behaviour largely unknown. Here, we test whether white a near-coastal environment form non-random associations with conspecifics simply share same space at time. We photo-identified 323 individuals—74 % juvenile females (175–300 cm)—during chumming events six different sites Mossel Bay, South Africa, over 6-year period (2008–2013), tested for found evidence random among individuals, though spatio-temporal co-occurrence close proximity was weakly structured according sex and, potentially, body size. Such biological traits may play minor part structuring individuals fine scales, which could reflect ontogenetic preferences diet site fidelity, differing levels sexes sizes. Our strengthens that shark species generally solitary display Large important top predators, but know little about (C. groups when they congregate scavenging coastal environment, where interactions be more likely. co-occur random, displaying no preferred avoided individuals. Nevertheless, influence traits, aggregating gender possibly, hypothesise these effects represent similar-sized sex, our mostly foragers.