Dear MARMAMlist members, My co-authors and I are pleased to announce our recent open-access publication in Current Biology entitled **Spatially-coordinated predation withdivision of labor increases feeding success in killer whales**. Link to thePublication: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225007456 AbstractGrouphunting is widespread among large vertebrates and is known to confer considerableadvantages compared to foraging alone. Yet, the mechanisms underlying grouphunting, including how social predators are organized during a hunt, arelargely unknown for marine predators. Using drone videos, which enabled us torecord the motion patterns of multiple individuals at once, we tracked thepredatory behaviour of killer whales along the Norwegian coast to test thehypothesis that group hunting is organised in space, both in terms ofindividual roles and interactions with conspecifics. Taking advantage ofshallow water hunts that reduced the interactions to a 2D horizontal plane, wereveal that whales using underwater tail slaps (i.e., strikers) to stunand capture herring, are more likely to hunt near a neighbour (i.e., a helper)rather than alone, and such joint slaps show higher feeding success(measured as feeding bout duration) than alone slaps. At the onset of a jointslap, the position of the whales follows a specific geometrical pattern.Whales preferentially take roles as strikers or helpers, withdivision of labour determined by size: larger individuals predominantly act as strikersin line with their higher feeding success, compared to smaller whales.Individuals involved in joint slaps have preferred partners, with whomthey share multi-decadal social bonds, likely allowing repeated opportunitiesto practice and learn to bestow enhanced geometric positioning and hunting success. These findings highlight the importance of social organization, long-term bonding, and developmental learning in the cooperative hunting of marine mammals. Feel free to reach outif any questions or comments: paolo.domenici@cnr.it or evejourdain@yahoo.fr Best wishes, —Eve JourdainFounder & Main investigatorNorwegian Orca Survey www.norwegianorcasurvey.com