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Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem, known globally for its rich marine biodiversity that includes many thousands of tropical breeding seabirds. Despite indications of localized declines in some seabird species from as early as the mid‐1990s, trends in seabird populations across the reef h...

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Autores principales: Woodworth, Bradley K., Fuller, Richard A., Hemson, Graham, McDougall, Andrew, Congdon, Bradley C., Low, Matthew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8336572/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32885491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13630
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author Woodworth, Bradley K.
Fuller, Richard A.
Hemson, Graham
McDougall, Andrew
Congdon, Bradley C.
Low, Matthew
author_facet Woodworth, Bradley K.
Fuller, Richard A.
Hemson, Graham
McDougall, Andrew
Congdon, Bradley C.
Low, Matthew
author_sort Woodworth, Bradley K.
collection PubMed
description The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem, known globally for its rich marine biodiversity that includes many thousands of tropical breeding seabirds. Despite indications of localized declines in some seabird species from as early as the mid‐1990s, trends in seabird populations across the reef have never been quantified. With a long history of human impact and ongoing environmental change, seabirds are likely sentinels in this important ecosystem. Using 4 decades of monitoring data, we estimated site‐specific trends for 9 seabird species from 32 islands and cays across the reef. Trends varied markedly among species and sites, but probable declines occurred at 45% of the 86 species‐by‐site combinations analyzed compared with increases at 14%. For 5 species, we combined site‐specific trends into a multisite trend in scaled abundance, which revealed probable declines of Common Noddy (Anous stolidus), Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus), and Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), but no long‐term changes in the 2 most widely distributed species, Greater Crested Tern (Thalasseus bergii) and Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster). For Brown Booby, long‐term stability largely resulted from increases at a single large colony on East Fairfax Island that offset declines at most other sites. Although growth of the Brown Booby population on East Fairfax points to the likely success of habitat restoration on the island, it also highlights a general vulnerability wherein large numbers of some species are concentrated at a small number of key sites. Identifying drivers of variation in population change across species and sites while ensuring long‐term protection of key sites will be essential to securing the future of seabirds on the reef.
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spelling pubmed-83365722021-08-10 Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef Woodworth, Bradley K. Fuller, Richard A. Hemson, Graham McDougall, Andrew Congdon, Bradley C. Low, Matthew Conserv Biol Contributed Papers The Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem, known globally for its rich marine biodiversity that includes many thousands of tropical breeding seabirds. Despite indications of localized declines in some seabird species from as early as the mid‐1990s, trends in seabird populations across the reef have never been quantified. With a long history of human impact and ongoing environmental change, seabirds are likely sentinels in this important ecosystem. Using 4 decades of monitoring data, we estimated site‐specific trends for 9 seabird species from 32 islands and cays across the reef. Trends varied markedly among species and sites, but probable declines occurred at 45% of the 86 species‐by‐site combinations analyzed compared with increases at 14%. For 5 species, we combined site‐specific trends into a multisite trend in scaled abundance, which revealed probable declines of Common Noddy (Anous stolidus), Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus), and Masked Booby (Sula dactylatra), but no long‐term changes in the 2 most widely distributed species, Greater Crested Tern (Thalasseus bergii) and Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster). For Brown Booby, long‐term stability largely resulted from increases at a single large colony on East Fairfax Island that offset declines at most other sites. Although growth of the Brown Booby population on East Fairfax points to the likely success of habitat restoration on the island, it also highlights a general vulnerability wherein large numbers of some species are concentrated at a small number of key sites. Identifying drivers of variation in population change across species and sites while ensuring long‐term protection of key sites will be essential to securing the future of seabirds on the reef. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2021-01-13 2021-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8336572/ /pubmed/32885491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13630 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
spellingShingle Contributed Papers
Woodworth, Bradley K.
Fuller, Richard A.
Hemson, Graham
McDougall, Andrew
Congdon, Bradley C.
Low, Matthew
Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title_full Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title_fullStr Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title_full_unstemmed Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title_short Trends in seabird breeding populations across the Great Barrier Reef
title_sort trends in seabird breeding populations across the great barrier reef
topic Contributed Papers
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8336572/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32885491
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13630
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