Dear MARMAM community,
My co-authors and I are pleased to announce the publication of our
article in Scientific Reports:
Virgili, A., Teillard, V., Dorémus, G. et al. Deep ocean drivers better
explain habitat preferences of sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus than
beaked whales in the Bay of Biscay. Sci Rep 12, 9620 (2022).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13546-x
The article is open-access and available at:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-13546-x
Abstract
Species Distribution Models are commonly used with surface dynamic
environmental variables as proxies for prey distribution to characterise
marine top predator habitats. For oceanic species that spend lot of time
at depth, surface variables might not be relevant to predict
deep-dwelling prey distributions. We hypothesised that descriptors of
deep-water layers would better predict the deep-diving cetacean
distributions than surface variables. We combined static variables and
dynamic variables integrated over different depth classes of the water
column into Generalised Additive Models to predict the distribution of
sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus and beaked whales Ziphiidae in the
Bay of Biscay, eastern North Atlantic. We identified which variables
best predicted their distribution. Although the highest densities of
both taxa were predicted near the continental slope and canyons, the
most important variables for beaked whales appeared to be static
variables and surface to subsurface dynamic variables, while for sperm
whales only surface and deep-water variables were selected. This could
suggest differences in foraging strategies and in the prey targeted
between the two taxa. Increasing the use of variables describing the
deep-water layers would provide a better understanding of the oceanic
species distribution and better assist in the planning of human
activities in these habitats.
Best regards,
Auriane Virgili
--
Dr Auriane Virgili
Ingénieure de recherche / Research engineer
Tél : +(33) 5 16 49 67 20
Standard: +(33) 5 46 44 99 10
https://www.observatoire-pelagis.cnrs.fr/auriane-virgili/
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Observatoire PELAGIS
*La Rochelle Université*
Centre commun d'analyse
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17000 La Rochelle
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