Having a son can be a costly experience for orca mothers, also known as killer whales — and it comes at the expense of having additional offspring, researchers have found.
, researchers report that male offspring from a population known as the southern residents — which are found off the Pacific coast of the U.S. — depend upon their mothers to such an extent that they reproduce less. These adult sons impose “biologically significant reproductive costs” on their mothers, according to the study. Researchers drew upon data of forty females from the population, dating back to the 1980s, to reach their conclusions.
One hypothesis is that due to this salmon-sharing practice, the mothers may not be able to carry a pregnancy through to term, says Weiss.Thus far, this mother-son dependency of orca offspring is only known to occur in the southern resident population. “We're interested to look if it's present in these other populations with strong mother offspring relationships,” Weiss says.
The new study reveals that orca mothers still feed their adult sons, a bond that may come at the expense of further offspring. at the University of St. Andrews who was not involved in the recent study, such comparisons are “intriguing,” highlighting how different killer whale populations can function.“For mammal feeders foraging inshore in Scotland, for example, we have field observations of males actively hunting and even provisioning younger members of the group," she says.
“We're interested in how this might play into extinction risk but what's driving the population to extinction is a lack of their primary food source,” Weiss says. Food shortages, boats, and pollution are all, resulting in their endangered status. “They are Chinook salmon specialists, which are in decline or greatly reduced from historical levels.”
“But at the end of the day, from a conservationist perspective, the thing that we need to do is pretty clear," says Weiss. "It's not easy, but [we need to] recover their prey populations."
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