title: Gait switches in deep-diving beaked whales: biomechanical strategies for long-duration dives.
abstract: Diving animals modulate their swimming gaits to promote locomotor efficiency and so enable longer, more productive dives. Beaked whales perform extremely long and deep foraging dives that probably exceed aerobic capacities for some species. Here, we use biomechanical data from suction-cup tags attached to three species of beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris, N=10; Ziphius cavirostris, N=9; and Hyperoodon ampullatus, N=2) to characterize their swimming gaits. In addition to continuous stroking and stroke-and-glide gaits described for other diving mammals, all whales produced occasional fluke-strokes with distinctly larger dorso-ventral acceleration, which we termed 'type-B' strokes. These high-power strokes occurred almost exclusively during deep dive ascents as part of a novel mixed gait. To quantify body rotations and specific acceleration generated during strokes we adapted a kinematic method combining data from two sensors in the tag. Body rotations estimated with high-rate magnetometer data were subtracted from accelerometer data to estimate the resulting surge and heave accelerations. Using this method, we show that stroke duration, rotation angle and acceleration were bi-modal for these species, with B-strokes having 76% of the duration, 52% larger body rotation and four times more surge than normal strokes. The additional acceleration of B-strokes did not lead to faster ascents, but rather enabled brief glides, which may improve the overall efficiency of this gait. Their occurrence towards the end of long dives leads us to propose that B-strokes may recruit fast-twitch fibres that comprise ∼80% of swimming muscles in Blainville's beaked whales, thus prolonging foraging time at depth.
authors.affiliation: SMRU (Sea Mammal Research Unit), University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK.
authors.forename: Lucía Martina
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Martín López
authors.affiliation: SMRU (Sea Mammal Research Unit), University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK.
authors.forename: Patrick J O
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.affiliation: SMRU (Sea Mammal Research Unit), University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK BIOECOMAC (Biodiversidad, Ecología Marina y Conservación), University of La Laguna, La Laguna, 38206, Spain.
authors.forename: Natacha
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Aguilar de Soto
authors.affiliation: SMRU (Sea Mammal Research Unit), University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark markjohnson@st-andrews.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D004242:Diving; D005684:Gait; D014907:Whales / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Accelerometer; Beaked whales; Biomechanics; Deep diving; Magnetometer; Swimming-gaits