Seasonality, long-term trends and co-occurrence of sharks in a top predator assemblage.

ABSTRACT: Shark predator assemblages play an important role in the top-down processes that are vital to marine ecosystem functioning. Spatiotemporal partitioning of sharks due to seasonal movements or population changes may have significant consequences for the top-down effects, depending on the level of functional redundancy in the assemblage. However, long-term, co-occurrence data for sharks is hard to obtain and often lacking. Here we use citizen science data collected by professional scuba guides over seven years to model the seasonal and across-year temporal dynamics, and intraguild and trophic co-occurrence interactions, for an assemblage of six shark top predators (Carcharhinus leucas, Carcharhinus obscurus, Carcharhinus limbatus, Carcharias taurus, Sphyrna lewini, and Galeocerdo cuvier). The

SUBMITTER: Balchin GP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11864520 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature