First insights into social behavioral patterns between pairs of bait-attracted mature female tiger sharks from Fuvahmulah Island, Maldives

Tiger sharks are predominantly known as solitary animals, yet their opportunistic and generalist predatory nature can drive interactions with conspecifics, including artificial provisioning sites. Underlying social dynamics may influence such instances of grouping behavior. Despite social behavior being an expanding niche in shark science, little is known about the social behavioral patterns of the tiger shark worldwide. Between 2023 and 2024 in Fuvahmulah Island, Maldives, 36 pair-wise non-random social interactions were observed at the provisioning site via video recordings by 40 photo-identified mature female tiger sharks. Social behaviors previously identified in white sharks and tiger sharks across multiple locations, such as give way, swim by, parallel swimming, follow give way, and stand back, have also been documented in tiger sharks from Fuvahmulah Island. Furthermore, this study presents two newly observed antagonistic social behaviors - submission and push away - described here for the first time. Within the mature female tiger shark aggregation in Fuvahmulah, a size-based hierarchy was observed, with certain individuals displaying the majority of dominance and social interactions. The asymmetry in the monthly display of social behaviors suggests an intra-specific variability of tiger shark movements to different home ranges. These findings deepen our knowledge of the tiger shark social behavior, highlighting data gaps in Maldives and ensuring effective conservation measures for this species. Recommendations for future research work at this site are also presented in this paper.