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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10485054 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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