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

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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.