Journal Article

Using spatiotemporal species distribution models to identify temporally evolving hotspots of species co-occurrence

Ono, Kotaro, Shelton, Andrew O., Jannot, Jason E., Thorson, James T., Ward, Eric J., Lee, Yong-Woo

2015

Overview

Identifying spatiotemporal hotspots is important for understanding basic ecological processes, but is particularly important for species at risk. A number of terrestrial and aquatic species are indirectly affected by anthropogenic impacts, simply because they tend to be associated with species that are targeted for removals. Using newly developed statistical models that allow for the inclusion of time-varying spatial effects, we examine how the co-occurrence of a targeted and nontargeted species can be modeled as a function of environmental covariates (temperature, depth) and interannual variability. The nontarget species in our case study (eulachon) is listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and is encountered by fisheries off the U.S. West Coast that target pink shrimp. Results from our spatiotemporal model indicated that eulachon bycatch risk decreases with depth and has a convex relationship with sea surface temperature. Additionally, we found that over the 2007-2012 period, there was support for an increase in eulachon density from both a fishery data set (+40%) and a fishery-independent data set (+55%). Eulachon bycatch has increased in recent years, but the agreement between these two data sets implies that increases in bycatch are not due to an increase in incidental targeting of eulachon by fishing vessels, but because of an increasing population size of eulachon. Based on our results, the application of spatiotemporal models to species that are of conservation concern appears promising in identifying the spatial distribution of environmental and anthropogenic risks to the population.

• Publisher: Ecological Society of America
• Subject: Animal Distribution / Animals / anthropogenic activities / biogeography / Bycatch / case studies / coasts / Conservation of Natural Resources - methods / data collection / Datasets / Decapoda / Density estimation / Ecological modeling / endangered species / Endangered Species Act of 1973 / Environmental Monitoring / eulachon / eulachon, Thaleichthys pacificus / Fisheries / fisheries closures / Fisheries science / Fishes - physiology / fishing boats / hotspots / INLA / INLA (integrated nested Laplace approximations) / integrated nested Laplace approximations / Marine / Marine ecology / marine protected areas / Models, Biological / nontarget organisms / nontarget species / Ocean fisheries / Pandalidae - physiology / Pandalus jordani / pink shrimp / pink shrimp, Pandalus jordani / population growth / population size / risk / Shrimp / Spatial models / spatiotemporal models / Species / Species Specificity / statistical models / surface water temperature / Thaleichthys pacificus / U.S. West Coast / United States