Katrine Turgeon

Body size and reserve protection affect flight initiation distance in parrotfishes

Flight initiation distance (FID), the distance at which an organism begins to flee an approaching threat, is an important component of antipredator behavior and a potential indicator of an animal’s perception of threat. In a field study on parrotfishes, we tested the predictions that FID in response to a diver will increase with body size, a correlate of reproductive value, and with experience of threat from humans. We studied a broad size range in four species on fringing reefs inside and outside the Barbados Marine Reserve. We used the Akaikes Information Criterion modified for small sample sizes (AICc) and model averaging to select and assess alternative models. Body size, reserve protection, and distance to a refuge, but not species, had strong support in explaining FID. FID increased with body size and generally remained two to ten times fish total length. FID was greater outside the reserve, especially in larger fish. Although we were not able to completely rule out other effects of size or reserve, this study supports predictions of an increase in FID with reproductive value and threat from humans.

Functional connectivity from a reef fish perspective: behavioral tactics for moving in a fragmented landscape

Functional connectivity, the degree to which the landscape facilitates or impedes movement, depends on how animals perceive costs and benefits associated with habitat features and integrate them into a movement path. There have been few studies on functional connectivity in marine organisms, despite its importance for the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas. In this study, we asked how open sand and conspecific distribution affected functional connectivity of longfin damselfish (Stegastes diencaeus) on fringing reefs in Barbados. We translocated 102 individuals to sites varying in sand gap width and in configuration: Continuous (solid reef between release site and territory); Detour (sand along the direct path between release site and territory, but an alternative, continuous solid U-shaped reef path); and Patch (sand between release site and territory, but an alternative stepping stone path). We visually tracked and mapped every homing path. We found no evidence of a barrier to movement in the Continuous configuration, but sand was a partial barrier in Detour and Patch configurations. The probability of crossing the sand gap dropped below 50% when its width was > 1.85 m in Detour and > 3.90 m in Patch configuration. Damselfish avoiding large gaps took detours that approximated the route maximizing travel over reef, but they crossed more short sand gaps and fewer conspecific territories, suggesting avoidance of agonistic interactions. This study quantifies for the first time the size and steepness of a barrier to movement in a marine organism, and it provides evidence for effects of both landscape configuration and conspecific distribution on functional connectivity.

Multi-domain monitoring of marine environments using a heterogeneous robot team

In this paper we describe a heterogeneous multi-robot system for assisting scientists in environmental monitoring tasks, such as the inspection of marine ecosystems. This team of robots is comprised of a fixed-wing aerial vehicle, an autonomous airboat, and an agile legged underwater robot. These robots interact with off-site scientists and operate in a hierarchical structure to autonomously collect visual footage of interesting underwater regions, from multiple scales and mediums. We discuss organizational and scheduling complexities associated with multi-robot experiments in a field robotics setting. We also present results from our field trials, where we demonstrated the use of this heterogeneous robot team to achieve multi-domain monitoring of coral reefs, based on real-time interaction with a remotely-located marine biologist.

Compensatory immigration depends on adjacent population size and habitat quality but not on landscape connectivity

1. Populations experiencing localized mortality can recover in the short term by net movement of individuals from adjacent areas, a process called compensatory immigration or spillover. Little is known about the factors influencing the magnitude of compensatory immigration or its impact on source populations. Such information is important for understanding metapopulation dynamics, the use of protected areas for conservation, management of exploited populations and pest control. 2. Using two small, territorial damselfish species (Stegastes diencaeus and S. adustus) in their naturally fragmented habitat, we quantified compensatory immigration in response to localized mortality, assessed its impact on adjacent source populations and examined the importance of potential immigrants, habitat quality and landscape connectivity as limiting factors. On seven experimental sites, we repeatedly removed 15% of the initial population size until none remained and immigration ceased. 3. Immigrants replaced 16-72% of original residents in S. diencaeus and 0-69% in S. adustus. The proportion of the source population that immigrated into depleted areas varied from 9% to 61% in S. diencaeus and from 3% to 21% in S. adustus. In S. diencaeus, compensatory immigration was strongly affected by habitat quality, to a lesser extent by the abundance of potential immigrants and not by landscape connectivity. In S. adustus, immigration was strongly affected by the density of potential migrants and not by habitat quality and landscape connectivity. On two control sites, immigration in the absence of creation of vacancies was extremely rare. 4. Immigration occurred in response to localized mortality and was therefore compensatory. It was highly variable, sometimes producing substantial impacts on both depleted and source populations. The magnitude of compensatory immigration was influenced primarily by the availability of immigrants and by the potential improvement in territory quality that they could achieve by immigrating and not by their ability to reach the depleted area.

Shelters and Their Use by Fishes on Fringing Coral Reefs

Coral reef fish density and species richness are often higher at sites with more structural complexity. This association may be due to greater availability of shelters, but surprisingly little is known about the size and density of shelters and their use by coral reef fishes. We quantified shelter availability and use by fishes for the first time on a Caribbean coral reef by counting all holes and overhangs with a minimum entrance diameter ≥3 cm in 30 quadrats (25 m2) on two fringing reefs in Barbados. Shelter size was highly variable, ranging from 42 cm3 to over 4,000,000 cm3, with many more small than large shelters. On average, there were 3.8 shelters m−2, with a median volume of 1,200 cm3 and a total volume of 52,000 cm3m−2. The number of fish per occupied shelter ranged from 1 to 35 individual fishes belonging to 66 species, with a median of 1. The proportion of shelters occupied and the number of occupants increased strongly with shelter size. Shelter density and total volume increased with substrate complexity, and this relationship varied among reef zones. The density of shelter-using fish was much more strongly predicted by shelter density and median size than by substrate complexity and increased linearly with shelter density, indicating that shelter availability is a limiting resource for some coral reef fishes. The results demonstrate the importance of large shelters for fish density and support the hypothesis that structural complexity is associated with fish abundance, at least in part, due to its association with shelter availability. This information can help identify critical habitat for coral reef fishes, predict the effects of reductions in structural complexity of natural reefs and improve the design of artificial reefs.

Locomotor compensation in the sea: body size affects escape gait in parrotfish

There has been surprisingly little attention to adaptive variation in the locomotor speed and gaits used in antipredator behaviour. We investigated the relationship between body size and the use of two alternative gaits by three species of parrotfishes (princess, Scarus taeniopterus; queen, Scarus vetula; stoplight, Sparisoma viride) escaping an approaching snorkeller in their natural fringing reef habitat in Barbados. As body size increased from about 7 to 58 cm, the proportion of fish using an energetically more costly but relatively faster escape (body and caudal fin swimming) rather than a less costly and relatively slower escape (paired fin swimming) decreased from 100% to 0%. In contrast, the study confirmed previous research showing that larger fish fled at greater distances from the snorkellers, behaviour which would have increased safety but incurred higher opportunity costs. We conclude that small fish require a more expensive gait to attain an adequate escape speed. Thus, the gait used for escaping shows a compensatory relationship with body size because small individuals with lower swimming capacity use a higher proportion of that capacity. On the other hand, flight initiation distance shows cospecialization with body

Unsupervised Learning of Terrain Appearance for Automated Coral Reef Exploration

We describe a navigation and coverage system based on unsupervised learning driven by visual input. Our objectiveis to allow a robot to remain continuously moving above a terrain of interest using visual feedback to avoid leavingthis region. As a particular application domain, we are interested in doing this in open water, but the approach makes few domain-specific assumptions. Specifically, our system employed an unsupervised learning technique to train a k-Nearest Neighbor classifier to distinguish between images of different terrain types through image segmentation. A simple random exploration strategy was used with this classifier to allow the robot to collect data while remaining confined above a coral reef, without the need to maintain pose estimates. We tested the technique in simulation, and a live deployment was conducted in open water. During the latter, the robot successfully navigated autonomously above acoral reef during a 20 minutes period.

Immigration Rates during Population Density Reduction in a Coral Reef Fish.

Although the importance of density-dependent dispersal has been recognized in theory, few empirical studies have examined how immigration changes over a wide range of densities. In a replicated experiment using a novel approach allowing within-site comparison, we examined changes in immigration rate following the gradual removal of territorial damselfish from a limited area within a much larger patch of continuous habitat. In all sites, immigration occurred at intermediate densities but did not occur before the start of removals and only rarely as density approached zero. In the combined data and in 5 of 7 sites, the number of immigrants was a hump-shaped function of density. This is the first experimental evidence for hump-shaped, density-dependent immigration. This pattern may be more widespread than previously recognized because studies over more limited density ranges have identified positive density dependence at low densities and negative density dependence at high densities. Positive density dependence at low density can arise from limits to the number of potential immigrants and from behavioral preferences for settling near conspecifics. Negative density dependence at high density can arise from competition for resources, especially high quality territories. The potential for non-linear effects of local density on immigration needs to be recognized for robust predictions of conservation reserve function, harvest impacts, pest control, and the dynamics of fragmented populations.

River impoundments cause little change in fish boreal diversity, but clear species assemblage shifts

Hydroelectricity is often presented as a clean and renewable energy source, but river flow regulation and fragmentation caused by dams are recognized to impact aquatic biodiversity in temperate and tropical ecosystems. However, the effects of boreal river impoundment are not clear as the few studies that exist have not been able to separate the hydrological changes brought about by dams from other factors (e.g. fish stocking, and species introduction). We adopted a multi-scale analysis to examine changes in nearshore fish communities over 20 years (spanning before and after impoundment) using a network of 24 sampling stations spread across from four reservoirs and two hydroelectricity complexes located in the boreal region (Northern Quebec, Canada). Given the remote location, confounding factors were minimal. We found no strong temporal trends in alpha- and gamma-diversity in impacted stations (upstream and downstream of the dam) relative to reference sites across the three spatial scales. Using beta-diversity analyses, we also detected a high stability in fish composition over time and space at the complex and reservoir scales. At the scale of the sampling stations, we observed higher rates of species turnover (beta-diversity) coincident with the time of reservoir filling and shortly after. Likewise, we detected species assemblage shifts that correlated with time since impoundment only at the sampling station scale. This pattern was masked at the complex and reservoir scales. Overall, the isolated effect of impoundment in these remote boreal ecosystems caused no loss of species and little change in fish diversity over 20 years, but resulted in substantial species assemblage shifts. Our work shows that examining community data at different scales is key to understand the anthropogenic impacts on fish biodiversity.Hydroelectricity is often presented as a clean and renewable energy source, but river impoundment, regulation and fragmentation caused by dams have been reported to have varying effects on aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem functions. The effects of river impoundment on fish are often difficult to isolate because of the presence of confounding factors such as stocking, fishing, species introduction and other human activities. In our study, we examined changes in littoral fish communities over 20 years, using a network of sites located in remote boreal ecosystems (northern Québec, Canada) with minimal confounding pressures. We found little evidence of divergent temporal trends in contemporary diversity metrics in reservoirs relative to reference sites across three spatial scales (i.e., sampling station, reservoir and hydroelectric complex). Using β-diversity analyses, we detected a high degree of stability in fish composition over time and space at the complex and reservoir scales. However, at the scale of the sampling station, we observed higher rates of species turnover coincident with the time of reservoir filling and shortly after. Likewise, species assemblage shifts that correlated with time since impoundment were detectable only at the sampling station scale. Our work shows that examining community data at different scales is key when trying to understand the anthropogenic impacts on fish biodiversity, and in designing impact assessment studies. Overall, the isolated effect of hydroelectricity production in these remote boreal ecosystems caused little change in fish diversity but resulted in species assemblage shifts.

Supply and demand drive a critical transition to dysfunctional fisheries

Significance Recent years have witnessed strenuous ongoing debate about the sustainability of many commercial fisheries. Here we apply commonly accepted principles of fishery science to consider the impact of price flexibility on long-term fishery sustainability in an era of increasing demand due to population increase and rising economic expectations. We apply this model to two commercial oceanic fisheries (cod and pollock) to demonstrate that harvest and price statistics that are commonly available for commercial fisheries can be used to diagnose the degree to which a given fishery has been overharvested. More importantly, the same heuristic can also be used to identify plausible targets for fishery rehabilitation and evaluate the effectiveness of alternative policy options to achieve those goals. There is growing awareness of the need for fishery management policies that are robust to changing environmental, social, and economic pressures. Here we use conventional bioeconomic theory to demonstrate that inherent biological constraints combined with nonlinear supply−demand relationships can generate threshold effects due to harvesting. As a result, increases in overall demand due to human population growth or improvement in real income would be expected to induce critical transitions from high-yield/low-price fisheries to low-yield/high-price fisheries, generating severe strains on social and economic systems as well as compromising resource conservation goals. As a proof of concept, we show that key predictions of the critical transition hypothesis are borne out in oceanic fisheries (cod and pollock) that have experienced substantial increase in fishing pressure over the past 60 y. A hump-shaped relationship between price and historical harvest returns, well demonstrated in these empirical examples, is particularly diagnostic of fishery degradation. Fortunately, the same heuristic can also be used to identify reliable targets for fishery restoration yielding optimal bioeconomic returns while safely conserving resource abundance.