Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism

Shark populations globally are facing catastrophic declines. Ecotourism has been posited as a potential solution to many of the issues facing shark conservation, yet increasingly studies suggest that such activity may negatively influence aspects of shark ecology and so further pressure declining po...

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Autores principales: Gayford, Joel H., Pearse, William D., De La Parra Venegas, Rafael, Whitehead, Darren A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10485054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679396
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39560-1
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author Gayford, Joel H.
Pearse, William D.
De La Parra Venegas, Rafael
Whitehead, Darren A.
author_facet Gayford, Joel H.
Pearse, William D.
De La Parra Venegas, Rafael
Whitehead, Darren A.
author_sort Gayford, Joel H.
collection PubMed
description Shark populations globally are facing catastrophic declines. Ecotourism has been posited as a potential solution to many of the issues facing shark conservation, yet increasingly studies suggest that such activity may negatively influence aspects of shark ecology and so further pressure declining populations. Here we combine UAV videography with deep learning algorithms, multivariate statistics and hidden Markov models (HMM) to quantitatively investigate the behavioural consequences of ecotourism in the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). We find that ecotourism increases the probability of sharks being in a disturbed behavioural state, likely increasing energetic expenditure and potentially leading to downstream ecological effects. These results are only recovered when fitting models that account for individual variation in behavioural responses and past behavioural history. Our results demonstrate that behavioural responses to ecotourism are context dependent, as the initial behavioural state is important in determining responses to human activity. We argue that models incorporating individuality and context-dependence should, wherever possible, be incorporated into future studies investigating the ecological impacts of shark ecotourism, which are only likely to increase in importance given the expansion of the industry and the dire conservation status of many shark species.
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spelling pubmed-104850542023-09-09 Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism Gayford, Joel H. Pearse, William D. De La Parra Venegas, Rafael Whitehead, Darren A. Sci Rep Article Shark populations globally are facing catastrophic declines. Ecotourism has been posited as a potential solution to many of the issues facing shark conservation, yet increasingly studies suggest that such activity may negatively influence aspects of shark ecology and so further pressure declining populations. Here we combine UAV videography with deep learning algorithms, multivariate statistics and hidden Markov models (HMM) to quantitatively investigate the behavioural consequences of ecotourism in the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). We find that ecotourism increases the probability of sharks being in a disturbed behavioural state, likely increasing energetic expenditure and potentially leading to downstream ecological effects. These results are only recovered when fitting models that account for individual variation in behavioural responses and past behavioural history. Our results demonstrate that behavioural responses to ecotourism are context dependent, as the initial behavioural state is important in determining responses to human activity. We argue that models incorporating individuality and context-dependence should, wherever possible, be incorporated into future studies investigating the ecological impacts of shark ecotourism, which are only likely to increase in importance given the expansion of the industry and the dire conservation status of many shark species. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10485054/ /pubmed/37679396 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39560-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Gayford, Joel H.
Pearse, William D.
De La Parra Venegas, Rafael
Whitehead, Darren A.
Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title_full Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title_fullStr Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title_full_unstemmed Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title_short Quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
title_sort quantifying the behavioural consequences of shark ecotourism
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10485054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679396
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39560-1
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