Wednesday June 25, 2025
Baylor University —
While leopard seals have long been labeled as dietary generalist predators, a new study led by researchers at Baylor University reveals that these Antarctic apex predators are anything but uniform in their feeding behavior. In fact, most individual leopard seals are specialists – and a few of them may be responsible for dramatic declines in key prey species like the Antarctic fur seal.
Published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the research team found that while the species as a whole feeds on a broad range of prey, nearly 60% of individual seals consistently target specific types of prey—sometimes for years at a time—specializing at different trophic levels within the food web.
“This level of individual specialization is striking,” said lead author Emily Sperou, Ph.D. ’25 with Baylor’s Department of Biology and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Rhode Island. “It shows that only a few seals may be responsible for significant impacts on prey populations, like the dramatic decline of the local Antarctic fur seal population.”