Drivers of spatial behaviour of the endangered undulate skate, Raja undulata

Abstract

1. Knowledge of the spatial behaviour of aquatic living resources is essential to assess their vulnerability to environmental and anthropogenic stressors and inform efficient management strategies.2. Elasmobranchs are particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Within this group of fish, the implementation of species-specific conservation actions has been challenging due to insufficient information on their biology and ecology.3. In this study, acoustic telemetry was used to investigate the seasonal variation, diel patterns, and biological and sea temperature effects on the spatial behaviour of the endangered undulate skate, Raja undulata, within a marine protected area in north-west Spain.4. Movement and behaviour were mainly driven by diel and seasonal patterns. The presence of the tagged skates in the study area peaked during summer. Space use

Drivers of behaviour and spatial ecology of the small spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula)

“…Clear and consistent patterns of diel activity and space use have already been reported for several shark species (Andrews et al, 2009;Kadar et al, 2019). Similar to Raja undulata (a skate species inhabiting the same study area; Leeb et al, 2021) the buccal cavity. By ventilating the gills in such manner, buccal pumping S. canicula can remain stationary for extended periods of time (Kelly et al, 2020), thus decreasing activity and activity space.…”

“…Clear and consistent patterns of diel activity and space use have already been reported for several shark species (Andrews et al, 2009; Kadar et al, 2019). Similar to Raja undulata (a skate species inhabiting the same study area; Leeb et al, 2021), S. canicula remained extremely inactive at midday, which could be associated with resting phases during daylight. Scyliorhinus canicula are able to filter the water by lowering and raising the floor of the buccal cavity.…”

“…Kernel utilization distributions were calculated weekly and for the whole study period using the entire dataset as well as separately for daytime and night-time. In order to avoid potential bias in the computation of activity space, KUDs were not calculated for weeks with fewer than 4 days of detections (regardless of whether the days were consecutive or not; Leeb et al, 2021).…”

Drivers of the spatial behaviour of the threatened thornback skate (Raja clavata)

“…Two ©Innovasea reference transmitters (V13 and V16) were placed at fixed positions within the receiver array to assess potential environmental effects on the detection patterns and the error associated to skate positions (Payne et al, 2010). Following range tests (Leeb et al, 2021), the distance between stations was set at ∼150 m to ensure adequate coverage and overlap between receiver's detection ranges. Assuming an average detection range of ≃150 m (corresponding to 50% of the proportion of the detections received during the range test (Leeb et al, 2021)) the area covered by the array would be 0.58 km 2 .…”

“…In systems ranging from lakes and rivers to the open ocean, acoustic telemetry is the most used method to track submerged aquatic organisms (Hussey et al, 2015). The use of underwater acoustic telemetry allows for an in-depth understanding of fish movement ecology, such as home range (Leeb et al, 2021), activity (Bohaboy et al, 2022) as well as diel and seasonal differences in movement patterns during the year (Williams-Grove and Szedlmayer, 2016). This represents a particularly suitable technique to meet the actions of the "Sustainable Development Goal 14" of the United Nations (Alós et al, 2022).…”