Predicting trends in humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) abundance using citizen science

Pacific Conservation Biology

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 297-309

  Tonachella, Nicoló ^a   Nastasi, Aurora ^a   Kaufman, Gregory ^a   Maldini, Daniela ^a   Rankin, Robert William ^a  

^a Pacific Whale Foundation   (United States)

Author keywords

Abundance; Citizen science; Generalized linear mixed models; Hawaii; Humpback whale; Megaptera novaeangliae; Random effects; Shore based survey; Trends

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; BREEDING SEASON; MARINE ECOSYSTEM; PREDICTION; SAMPLING; WHALE;

HAWAII [UNITED STATES]; MAUI COUNTY; UNITED STATES;

CETACEA; MEGAPTERA; MEGAPTERA NOVAEANGLIAE;

EID: 84937729857     PISSN: 10382097     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1071/pc120297     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Akaike, H., 1974. A new look at the statistical model identification. IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control 19:716-723.
2. Aki, K., Brock, R., Miller, J., Joseph, R., Mobley, P., Rappa J., Tarnas, D. and Yuen, M., 1994. A site characterization study for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, Technical Report 94-06, University of Hawai'i Sea Grant.
3. Alldredge, M. W., Pollock, K. H., Simons, T. R., Collazo, J. A., and Shriner, S. A., 2007. Time-of-detection method for estimating abundance from point-count surveys. The Auk 124:653-664.
4. Anderson, D. R., Burnham, K. P. and Thompson, W. L., 2000. Null hypothesis testing: problems, prevalence, and an alternative. J. Wildl. Manage. 64:912-923.
5. Au, W. W. L., Mobley, J., Burgess, W. C, Lammers, M. O. and Nachtigall, P. E., 2000. Seasonal and diurnal trends of chorusing humpback whales wintering in waters off western Maui. Marine Mam. Sci. 16:530-544.
6. Baker, C. S. and Herman, L. M., 1981. Migration and local movement of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) through Hawaiian waters. Canadian J. Zool. 59:460-469.
7. Baker, C. S. and Herman, L. M., 1984. Aggressive behavior between humpback whales, Megaptera novaeangliae, wintering in Hawaiian waters. Canadian J. Zool. 62:1922-1937.
8. Bivand, R. and Rundel, C, 2012. rgeos: Interface to Geometry Engine - Open Source (GEOS). Retrieved from http://CRAN. R-project.org/package=rgeos.
9. Bolker, B. M., Brooks, M. E., Clark, C. J., Geange, S. W. Poulsen, J. R., Stevens, M. H. H. and White, J-S. S., 2009. Generalized linear mixed models: a practical guide for ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecol. & Evol. 24(3):127-135.
10. Breiman, L., 2001. Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures. Statistical Sci. 16:199-215.
11. Buckland, S. T, Anderson, D. R., Burnham, K. P., Laake, J. L., Borchers, D. L. and Thomas, L., 2004. Advanced Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
12. Calambokidis, J., 1999. Status and trends of humpback whales in the North Pacific. Paper presented at the Thirteenth Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Hawaii, 1999. p. 28.
13. Calambokidis, J., Falcone, E. A., Quinn, T. J., Burdin, A. M. J. P., Ford, J. K. B., Gabriele, C. M., Leduc, R., Mattila, D., Rojas, L., Straley, J. M., Taylor, B. L. R. J. U., Weller, D. H. B., Yamaguchi, M., Bendlin, A, Camacho, D., Flynn, K., Barlow, J. et al, 2008. SPLASH: Structure of Populations, Levels of Abundance and Status of Humpback Whales in the North Pacific Final report for Contract AB133F-03-RP-00078.
14. Chu, K. C, 1988. Dive times and ventilation patterns of singing humpback whales (Megaptera-novaeangliae). Canadian J. Zool. 66:1322-1327.
15. Cohn, J. P., 2008. Citizen science: can volunteers do real research? Biosci. 58:192-197.
16. Conroy, M. J. and Carroll, J. P., 2009. Quantitative Conservation of Vertebrates. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK.
17. Dickinson, J. L., Zuckerberg, B. and Bonter, D. N., 2010. Citizen science as an ecological research tool: challenges and benefits. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Evol. & Syst. 41:149-172.
18. Diefenbach, D. R., Brauning, D. W. and Mattice, J. A, 2003. Variability in grassland bird counts related to observer differences and species detection rates. The Auk 120:1168-1179.
19. Elith, J., Graham, C. H., Anderson, R. P., Dudík, M., Ferrier S., Guisan, A., Hijmans, R. J., Huettmann, F., Leathwick, J. R., Lehmann, A., Li, J., Lohmann, L. G., Loiselle, B. A, Manion, G., Moritz, C, Nakamura, M. Nakazawa, Y., Overton, J. McC, Peterson, A. T., Phillips, S. J. et al., 2006. Novel methods improve prediction of species' distributions from occurrence data. Ecography 29:129-151.
20. Farnsworth, G. L., Pollock, K. H., Nichols, J. D., Simons, T. R., Hines, J. E., and Sauer, J. R., 2002. A removal model for estimating detection probabilities from point-count surveys. The Auk 119:414-425.
21. Fletcher, D. J., 2012. Estimating overdispersion when fitting a generalized linear model to sparse data. Biometrika 99:230-237.
22. Gelman, A., 2003. A Bayesian formulation of exploratory data analysis and goodness-of-fit testing. Internat. Statistical Rev. 71:369-382.
23. Gerber, L. R. and DeMaster, D. P., 1999. An approach to endangered species act classification of North Pacific humpback whales. Cons. Biol. 13:1203-1214.
24. Gerrodette, T., 2011. Inference without significance: measuring support for hypotheses rather than rejecting them. Marine Ecol. 32:404-418.
25. Gilks, W. R., Richardson, S. and Spiegelhalter, D. J., 1996. Markov Chain Monte Carlo in Practice. Chapman and Hall, London.
26. Gillies, C. S., Hebblewhite, M., Nielsen, S. E., Krawchuk, M. A, Aldridge, C. L., Frair, J. L., Saher, D. J., Stevens, C. E., and Jerde, C. L., 2006. Application of random effects to the study of resource selection by animals. J. Anim. Ecol. 75:887-898.
27. Greenwood, J. J. D., 1994. Trust the wildlife volunteers. Nat. 368:490.
28. Haario, H., Saksman, E., and Tamminen, J., 2005. Componentwise adaptation for high dimensional MCMC. Computational Statistics 20:265-273.
29. Halstead, B. J., Wylie, G. D., Coates, P. S., Valcarcel, P. and Casazza, M. L., 2012. "Exciting statistics": the rapid development and promising future of hierarchical models for population ecology. Anim. Cons. 15:133-135.
30. Herman, L. M. and Antinoja, R. C., 1977. Humpback whales in the Hawaiian breeding waters: Population and pod characteristics. Scientific Reports Whales Res. Inst. 29:59-85.
31. Kavanagh, R. and Recher, H. F., 1983. Effects of observer variability on the census of birds. Corella 7:93-100.
32. Kendall, B. E., Prendergast, J. and Bjørnstad, O. N., 1998. The macroecology of population dynamics: taxonomic and biogeographic patterns in population cycles. Ecol. Letters 1:160-164.
33. Kéry, M. and Schmid, H., 2004. Monitoring programs need to take into account imperfect species detectability. Basic & App. Ecol. 5:65-73.
34. Koss, R. S., Miller, K., Wescott, G., Bellgrove, A., Boxshall, A., McBurnie, J., Bunce, A., Gilmour, P. and Ierodiaconou, D., 2011. An evaluation of Sea Search as a citizen science programme in Marine Protected Areas. Pac. Cons. Biol. 15:116-127.
35. Krukonis, G. and Schaffer, W., 1991. Population cycles in mammals and birds: Does periodicity scale with body size? J. Theo. Biol. 148:469-493.
36. MacNally, R., Bowen, M., Howes, A., McAlpine, C. A. and Maron, M., 2011. Despotic, high-impact species and the subcontinental scale control of avian assemblage structure. Ecol. 93:668-678.
37. MacKay, D. J., 2003. Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
38. MacKenzie, D. I. and Kendall, W. L., 2002. How should detection probability be incorporated into estimates of relative abundance? Ecol. 83:2387-2393.
39. Marques, T. A., Buckland, S. T., Borchers, D. L., Tosh, D. and Mcdonald, R. A, 2010. Point transect sampling along linear features. Biomet. 66:1247-1255.
40. Melbourne, B. A. and Hastings, A., 2008. Extinction risk depends strongly on factors contributing to stochasticity. Nat. 454:100-103.
41. Metropolis, N., Rosenbluth, A. W., Rosenbluth, M. N., Teller, A. H. and Teller, E., 1953. Equation of state calculations by fast computing machines. J. Chemical Physics 21:1087-1092.
42. Mobley, J. R. Jr. and Herman, L. M., 1985. Transience of social affiliations among humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) on the Hawaiian wintering grounds. Canadian J. Zool. 63:762-772.
43. Mobley, J. R. Jr., Bauer, G. B. and Herman, L. M., 1999. Changes over a ten-year interval in the distribution and relative abundance of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) wintering in Hawaiian waters. Aquat. Mam. 25:63-72.
44. Mobley, J. R. Jr., Spitz, S. S., Grotenfendt, R., Forestell, P., Frankel, A. and Bauer, G., 2001. Abundance of humpback whales in Hawaiian waters: Results of 1993-2000 aerial surveys. Report to the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
45. Moore, J. E. and Barlow, J., 2011. Bayesian state-space model of fin whale abundance trends from a 1991-2008 time series of line-transect surveys in the California Current. J. App. Ecol. 48:1195-1205.
46. Nichols, J. D., Hines, J. E., Sauer, J. R., Fallon, F. W., Fallon, J. E., and Heglund, P. J., 2000. A double-observer approach for estimating detection probability and abundance from point counts. The Auk 117:393-408.
47. Niemi, A. and Fernández, C., 2010. Bayesian spatial point process modeling of line transect data. J. Agricul., Biolog. & Env. Statistics 15:327-345.
48. Norvell, R. E., Howe, F. P. and Parrish, J. R., 2003. A sevenyear comparison of relative-abundance and distancesampling methods. The Auk 120:1013-1028.
49. R Development Core Team, 2010. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from http://www.rproject.org.
50. Salden, D., 1988. Humpback whale encounter rates offshore of Maui, Hawaii. J. Wildl. Manage. 52:301-304.
51. Sauer, J. R., Peterjohn, B. G. and Link, W. A., 1994. Observer differences in the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The Auk 111:50-62.
52. Schaub, M., and Kéry, M., 2012. Combining information in hierarchical models improves inferences in population ecology and demographic population analyses. Anim. Cons. 15:125-126.
53. Silvertown, J., 2009. A new dawn for citizen science. Trends Ecol. & Evol. 24(9):467-471.
54. Simons, T. R., Alldredge, M. W., Pollock, K. H., Wettroth, J. M. and Dufty, A. M., 2007. Experimental analysis of the auditory detection process on avian point counts. The Auk 124:986-999.
55. Trumbull, D. J., Bonney, R., Bascom, D. and Cabral A., 2000. Thinking scientifically during participation in a citizen-science project. Sci. Education 84:265-275.
56. Tyack, P. and Whitehead, H., 1983. Male competition in large groups of wintering humpback whales. Behav. 83:132-154.
57. Utech, D., 2000. Valuing Hawai'i's humpback whales: the economic impact of humpbacks on Hawai'i's ocean tour boat industry. Pp. 6-52 in The Economic Contribution of Whalewatching to Regional Economies: Perspectives from Two National Marine Sanctuaries. Marine Sanctuaries Conservation Series MSD-00-2. U. S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Marine Sanctuaries Division, Silver Spring, MD.
58. Vives, J., Losilla, J. M., Rodrigo, M. F. and Portell, M., 2008. Overdispersion tests in count-data analysis. Psychological Reports 103:145-160.
59. Zerbini, A. N., Clapham, P. J. and Wade, P. R., 2010. Assessing plausible rates of population growth in humpback whales from life-history data. Marine Biol. 157:1225-1236.