Interpreting the spatio-temporal patterns of sea turtle strandings: Going with the flow

Hart, Kristen M.; Mooreside, Peter D.; Crowder, Larry B.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2005.10.047

Cited by 117 publications

(126 citation statements)

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“…Similar results were documented by Wilhelm et al [27]. The trajectory of drifting corpses may be influenced by other factors such as buoyance as a function of water temperature and salinity, and a force resulting from the combined effects of winds and currents [112, 113]. In the region studied, onshore winds prevail during winter months, when adverse sea conditions might increase the sinking probability of seabird carcasses [27].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Environmental Predictors of Seabird Wrecks in a Tropical Coastal Area

2016

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Beached bird surveys have been widely used to monitor the impact of oil pollution in the oceans. However, separating the combined effects of oil pollution, environmental variables and methodological aspects of beach monitoring on seabird stranding patterns is a challenging task. The effects of a comprehensive set of oceanographic and climatic variables and oil pollution on seabird strandings in a tropical area of Brazil were investigated herein, using two robust and innovative methods: Generalized Linear Mixed Models and Structural Equation Modeling. We assessed strandings of four resident seabird species along 480 km of beaches divided into 11 sampling areas, between November 2010 and September 2013. We found that increasing the distance from the nearest breeding island reduce the seabird stranding events. Storm activity and biological productivity were the most important factors affecting the stranding events of brown boobies Sula leucogaster, Cabot’s terns Thalasseus acuflavidus and kelp gulls Larus dominicanus. These species are also indirectly affected by warm tropical waters, which reduce chlorophyll-a concentrations. Beach surveys are, thus, useful to investigate the mortality rates of resident species near breeding sites, where individuals are more abundant and exposed to local factors associated with at-sea mortality. In contrast, conservation actions and monitoring programs for far-ranging seabird species are needed in more distant foraging areas. Furthermore, beach monitoring programs investigating the impact of oil pollution on seabirds need to account for the effects of environmental factors on stranding patterns. The present study also demonstrated that seabirds inhabiting tropical coastal waters are sensitive to climate conditions such as adverse weather, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity in next decades.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Environmental Predictors of Seabird Wrecks in a Tropical Coastal Area

2016

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“…Other Candidate Marine Vertebrates.-In spatiotemporal terms, cetaceans live at the same scales as other large marine vertebrates like sharks, pinnipeds, and sea turtles (Eckert and Stewart 2001;Reeves et al 2002;Hart et al 2006). Sea turtles and sharks in the ENP strand in numbers so small as not to be useful for the purposes of this study.…”

Section: Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carcasses on the coastline: measuring the ecological fidelity of the cetacean stranding record in the eastern North Pacific Ocean

Pyenson¹

2010

Paleobiology

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Abstract.-To understand how well fossil assemblages represent original communities, paleoecologists seek comparisons between death assemblages and their source communities. These comparisons have traditionally used nearshore, marine invertebrate assemblages for their logistical ease, high abundance, and comparable census data from living communities. For large marine vertebrates, like cetaceans, measuring their diversity in ocean ecosystems is difficult and expensive. Cetaceans, however, often beach or strand themselves along the coast, and archived data on stranded cetaceans have been recorded, in some areas, over several decades. If the stranding record is interpreted as a death assemblage, then the stranding record may represent a viable alternative for measuring diversity in living communities on directly adjacent coastlines. This study assessed the fidelity of the cetacean stranding record in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. The living community in this region has been studied for over 100 years and, recently, extensive and systematic live transect surveys using ship-based observing platforms have produced a valuable source of live diversity data. Over this same period, the U.S. Marine Mammal Stranding Program has collected and archived a record of cetacean strandings along the U.S. Pacific coastline, providing an ideal death assemblage for comparison. Using fidelity metrics commonly used in marine invertebrate taphonomy, I determined that the stranding record samples the living cetacean community with high fidelity, across fine and coarse taxonomic ranks, and at large geographic scales (.1000 km of coastline). The stranding record is also richer than the live surveys, with live-dead ratios between 1.1 and 1.3. The stranding record recovers similar rank-order relative abundances as live surveys, with statistical significance. Also, I applied sample-based rarefaction methods to generate collector's curves for strandings along the U.S. Pacific Coast to better evaluate the spatiotemporal characteristics of the stranding record. Results indicate that saturation (i.e., sampling .95% assemblage) at species, genus, and family levels occurs in less than five years of sampling, with families accumulating faster than species, and larger geographic regions (i.e., longer coastlines) accumulating taxa the most rapidly. The high fidelity of the stranding record, measured both in richness and by ranked relative abundance, implies that ecological structure from living cetacean communities is recorded in the death assemblage, a finding that parallels marine invertebrate assemblages, though at far larger spatial scales. These results have implications for studying cetacean ecology in both modern and ancient environments: first, these results imply that the stranding record, over sufficiently long time intervals, yields a richer assemblage than using linetransect methods, and faithfully records aspects of community structure; and second, these results imply that geochronologically well-constrained fossil cetacean assemblages ...

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“…currents) and biological factors (e.g. decomposition) affecting the probability and location of carcass strandings (Hart et al 2006). However, examining reports of stranded animals represents a vital opportunity for research and can provide insights into the impacts of anthropogenic threats which would otherwise go undetected (Chaloupka et al 2008, Casale et al 2010.…”

Section: Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%