Conserving pelagic habitats: seascape modelling of an oceanic top predator
By M. Louzao, David Pinaud, C. Péron, K. Delord, T. Wiegand, Henri Weimerskirch. 2011
97 citations recorded by the source corpus.
1. Currently pelagic ecosystems are changing significantly due to multiple threats. An important management policy is to establish marine protected areas, until now overlooked due to the difficulty of declaring ‘high seas’ protected areas, obtaining long-term distribution data on indicator species and the dynamic nature of these ecosystems. 2. Within this framework, we developed predictive habitat suitability models of an oceanic predator, the vulnerable wandering albatross Diomedea exulans , in the highly dynamic Southern Ocean. Based on a long-term tracking database (1998–2008), we estimated three quantitative ecological indices that complementarily describe the hierarchical habitat use of the species at multiple spatial scales: where the species (i) spent more time (the seascape, based on the time spent per area), (ii) searched for prey (the foraging habitat, based on zones of increased foraging intensity using first passage time), and (iii) fed (the feeding habitat, based on prey capture data). 3. Predictive habitat models reasonably matched the observed distribution patterns and described albatross multi-scale habitat use as a hierarchical arrangement: albatrosses foraged over topographic features in subtropical waters, nested within the wider seascape due to the constraint imposed by the colony effect, whereas feeding occurred nested over the continental shelf and seamounts in areas of low oceanographic variability within the Polar Frontal Zone. 4. Within the current oceanographic conditions, the location of key pelagic habitats for albatrosses breeding in the southern Indian Ocean encompassed certain topographic features such as pelagic areas surrounding main breeding sites, seamounts and submarine mountain ranges. The placement of these pelagic hotspots depends on the current sea surface temperature conditions. 5. Synthesis and applications . The present study provides two key conservation and management tools. First, we provide the first map to support the development of a prospective network of priority conservation zones across the southern Indian Ocean based on habitat predictions of an oceanic indicator species. This could be used not only to support conservation of top predators but also the underlying biodiversity associated with pelagic key habitats. Secondly, the developed habitat modelling procedure is widely applicable and could be used to track changes in species distribution in both marine and terrestrial environments within the current global change scenario.
Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/44b3c748b8ad3dcb1dca824f9315ae3e91686ab5
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Citations in the corpus
- Scale of inference: on the sensitivity of habitat models for wide‐ranging marine predators to the resolution of environmental data (2017, background): “Temporally-averaged environmental data fields of coarse spatial resolution are often used to contextualise movement or sightings datasets for wide-ranging marine predators (e.g. Kaschner et al. 2006; Louzao et al. 2011; Mannocci et al. 2014; Arrizabalaga et al. 2015; Mannocci et al. 2015).”
- Migratory marine species: their status, threats and conservation management needs (2014, background): “…data on species distribution, abundance and movement from at-sea surveys and satellite tracking devices with remotely sensed oceanographic environmental data are now becoming common place (Shillinger et al., 2008; Block et al., 2011; Louzao et al., 2011; Oppel et al., 2012; Mannocci et al., 2013).”
- Assessing the location and stability of foraging hotspots for pelagic seabirds: An approach to identify marine Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Spain (2012, background): “…the relationship between seabirds and their habitat and to assess the temporal variability of such habitat, thus contributing to reduce data bias and provide more accurate MPA proposals (e.g. Le Corre et al., this issue; Louzao et al., 2006, 2011; Oppel et al., this issue; Nur et al., 2011).”
- Short- and long-term consistency in the foraging niche of wandering albatrosses (2012, background): “Given their wide foraging range, they are ideal indicator species for defining resource hotspots, which could be incorporated into networks of marine protected areas (Louzao et al. 2010).”
- The spatial structure of Antarctic biodiversity (2014, background): “…mesoscale features, and seabed topography in determining variation in pelagic biodiversity (see, e.g., Murphy et al. 2007, Tittensor et al. 2010, Louzao et al. 2011, Wakefield et al. 2011, Ainley et al. 2012, Strugnell et al. 2012), the complexities of diversity–environment interactions in the…”
- Identifying predictable foraging habitats for a wide‐ranging marine predator using ensemble ecological niche models (2015, background): “However, there is evidence to suggest that some species, particularly albatrosses, may target or track regions in which the availability of prey resources is related to persistent oceanographic conditions and hence predictable over broad- to mesoscales, thus optimizing foraging success (Piatt et al.”