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Joint estimation of crown of thorns (Acanthaster plancii) densities on the Great Barrier Reef

, , , , , , , , , ,
1 Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
2 ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
3 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
4 The Environment Institute and School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
5 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
6 Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (Marine Parks), Queensland Department of National Parks, Sport and Racing, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
7 Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2057v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Conservation Biology, Ecology, Environmental Sciences, Marine Biology
Keywords
CoTS, Bayesian analysis, monitoring, mark-recapture, data integration
Copyright
© 2016 MacNeil et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
MacNeil MA, Mellin C, Pratchett MS, Hoey J, Anthony KR, Cheal AJ, Miller I, Sweatman H, Cowan ZL, Taylor S, Fonnesbeck CJ. 2016. Joint estimation of crown of thorns (Acanthaster plancii) densities on the Great Barrier Reef. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2057v1

Abstract

Crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS; Acanthaster spp.) are an outbreaking pest among many Indo-Pacific coral reefs that cause substantial ecological and economic damage. Despite ongoing CoTS research there remain critical gaps in observing CoTS populations and accurately estimating their numbers, greatly limiting understanding of the causes and sources of CoTS outbreaks. Here we address two of these gaps by (1) estimating the detectability of adult CoTS on typical underwater visual count (UVC) surveys using covariates and (2) inter-calibrating multiple data sources to estimate CoTS densities within the Cairns sector of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). We find that, on average, CoTS detectability is high at 0.82 [0.77, 0.87] (median highest posterior density (HPD) and [95% uncertainty intervals]), with CoTS disc width having the greatest influence on detection. Integrating this information with coincident surveys from alternative sampling programs, we estimate CoTS densities in the Cairns sector of the GBR averaged 44 [41, 48] adults per hectare in 2014.

Author Comment

This article estimates the detectability of adult crown-of-thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef and develops a calibration model to integrate multiple data sources. It has been submitted to PeerJ for peer-review.

Additional Information

Competing Interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author Contributions

M. Aaron MacNeil conceived and designed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Camille Mellin wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Morgan S Pratchett wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Jessica Hoey conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Kenneth RN Anthony wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Alistair J Cheal conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Ian Miller conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Hugh Sweatman conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Zara L Cowan conceived and designed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Sascha Taylor performed the experiments, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Chris J Fonnesbeck analyzed the data, wrote the paper, reviewed drafts of the paper.

Field Study Permissions

The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):

All fieldwork was conducted under the Australian Institute of Marine Science research permit issued by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

Data Deposition

The following information was supplied regarding data availability:

1) CoTS_MR

2) N/A

3) https://github.com/mamacneil/CoTS_MR

Funding

This work was supported by funding from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and from the Queensland Government via an Accelerate Partnership under the Department of Science, Industry, Technology and Innovation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Joint estimation of crown of thorns (Acanthaster plancii) densities on the Great Barrier Reef
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