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Obtaining robust estimates of population abundance is a central challenge hindering the conservation and management of many threatened and exploited species. Close-kin mark-recapture (CKMR) is a genetics-based approach that has strong potential to improve the monitoring of data-limited species by enabling estimates of abundance, survival, and other parameters for populations that are challenging to assess. However, CKMR models have received limited sensitivity testing under realistic population dynamics and sampling scenarios, impeding the application of the method in population monitoring programs and stock assessments. Here, we use individual-based simulation to examine how unmodeled population dynamics and aging uncertainty affect the accuracy and precision of CKMR parameter estimates under different sampling strategies. We then present adapted models that correct the biases that arise from model misspecification. Our results demonstrate that a simple base-case CKMR model produces robust estimates of population abundance with stable populations that breed annually; however, if a population trend or non-annual breeding dynamics are present, or if year-specific estimates of abundance are desired, a more complex CKMR model must be constructed. In addition, we show that CKMR can generate reliable abundance estimates for adults from a variety of sampling strategies, including juvenile-focused sampling where adults are never directly observed (and aging error is minimal). Finally, we apply a CKMR model that has been adapted for population growth and intermittent breeding to two decades of genetic data from juvenile lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris) in Bimini, Bahamas, to demonstrate how application of CKMR to samples drawn solely from juveniles can contribute to monitoring efforts for highly mobile populations. Overall, this study expands our understanding of the biological factors and sampling decisions that cause bias in CKMR models, identifies key areas for future inquiry, and provides recommendations that can aid biologists in planning and implementing an effective CKMR study, particularly for long-lived data-limited species.

Biodiversity is critical for maintaining ecosystem function but is threatened by increasing anthropogenic pressures. In the Southern Ocean, a highly biologically productive region containing many endemic species, proactive management is urgently needed to mitigate increasing pressures from fishing, climate change, and tourism. Site‐based conservation is one important tool for managing the negative impacts of human activities on ecosystems. The Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Standard is a standardized framework used to define sites vital for the persistence of global biodiversity based on criteria and quantitative thresholds. We used tracking data from 14 species of Antarctic and subantarctic seabirds and pinnipeds from the publicly available Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) data set to define KBAs for a diverse suite of marine predators. We used track2kba, an R package that supports identification of KBAs from telemetry data through identification of highly used habitat areas and estimates of local abundance within sites. We compared abundance estimates at each site with thresholds for KBA criteria A1, B1, and D1 (related to globally threatened species, individual geographically restricted species, and demographic aggregations, respectively). We identified 30 potential KBAs for 13 species distributed throughout the Southern Ocean that were vital for each individual species, population, and life‐history stage for which they were determined. These areas were identified as highly used by these populations based on observational data and complement the ongoing habitat modeling and bioregionalization work that has been used to prioritize conservation areas in this region. Although further work is needed to identify potential KBAs based on additional current and future data sets, we highlight the benefits of utilizing KBAs as part of a holistic approach to marine conservation, given their significant value as a global conservation tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the ecological processes that underpin species distribution patterns is a fundamental goal in spatial ecology. However, developing predictive models of habitat use is challenging for species that forage in marine environments, as both predators and prey are often highly mobile and difficult to monitor. Consequently, few studies have developed resource selection functions for marine predators based directly on the abundance and distribution of their prey. We analysed contemporaneous data on the diving locations of two seabird species, the shallow-diving Peruvian Booby (Sula variegata) and deeper diving Guanay Cormorant (Phalacrocorax bougainvilliorum), and the abundance and depth distribution of their main prey, Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). Based on this unique data set, we developed resource selection functions to test the hypothesis that the probability of seabird diving behaviour at a given location is a function of the relative abundance of prey in the upper water column. For both species, we show that the probability of diving behaviour is mostly explained by the distribution of prey at shallow depths. While the probability of diving behaviour increases sharply with prey abundance at relatively low levels of abundance, support for including abundance in addition to the depth distribution of prey is weak, suggesting that prey abundance was not a major factor determining the location of diving behaviour during the study period. The study thus highlights the importance of the depth distribution of prey for two species of seabird with different diving capabilities. The results complement previous research that points towards the importance of oceanographic processes that enhance the accessibility of prey to seabirds. The implications are that locations where prey is predictably found at accessible depths may be more important for surface foragers, such as seabirds, than locations where prey is predictably abundant. Analysis of the relative importance of abundance and accessibility is essential for the design and evaluation of effective management responses to reduced prey availability for seabirds and other top predators in marine systems.

Small pelagic fish aggregate within areas of suitable habitat to form patchy distributions with localized peaks in abundance. This presents challenges for geostatistical methods designed to investigate the processes underpinning the spatial distribution of stocks and simulate distributions for further analysis. In two-stage models, presence-absence is treated as separable and independent from the process explaining nonzero densities. This is appropriate where gaps in the distribution are attributable to one process and conditional abundance to another, but less so where patchiness is attributable primarily to the strong schooling tendencies of small pelagic fish within suitable habitat. We therefore developed a new modelling framework based on a truncated Gaussian random field (GRF) within a Bayesian framework. We evaluated this method using simulated test data and then applied it to acoustic survey data for Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens). We assessed the method's performance in terms of posterior densities of spatial parameters, and the density distribution, spatial pattern, and overall spatial distribution of posterior predictions. We conclude that Bayesian posterior prediction based on a truncated GRF is effective at reproducing the patchiness of the observed spatial distribution of anchoveta. Resume : Les petits poissons pelagiques se regroupent dans des regions d'habitat convenable, produisant ainsi des repartitions irregulieres caracterisees par des zones ponctuelles de plus grande abondance. Cela complique l'application de methodes geostatistiques concues pour etudier les processus qui sous-tendent la repartition spatiale des stocks et pour simuler des repartitions pour d'autres analyses. Dans les modeles a deux etapes, la presence-absence est traitee comme etant distincte et independante du processus qui explique les densites non nulles. Cette approche convient quand les trous dans la repartition et l'abondance conditionnelle sont attribuables a des processus distincts, mais elle l'est moins quand l'irregularite est principalement attribuable aux fortes tendances des petits poissons pelagiques a se regrouper en bancs au sein d'habitats convenables. Nous avons donc elabore un nouveau cadre de modelisation base sur un champ aleatoire gaussien (CAG) tronque a l'interieur d'un cadre bayesien. Nous avons evalue cette methode a l'aide de donnees d'essai simulees, puis l'avons appliquee a des donnees de releves acoustiques pour l'anchois du Perou (Engraulis ringens). Nous avons evalue la performance de cette methode en termes de densites a posteriori des parametres spatiaux et de la repartition des densites, du motif spatial et de la repartition spatiale globale des predictions a posteriori. Nous en concluons que la prediction a posteriori bayesienne basee sur un CAG tronque reproduit efficacement l'irregularite de la repartition spatiale observee des anchois du Perou. [Traduit par la Redaction], Introduction Acoustic surveys of small pelagic fish provide valuable information on their abundance and distribution (Simmonds and MacLennan 2005). The distribution of small pelagic fish typically can exhibit strong spatial [...]