Important At-Sea Areas of Colonial Breeding Marine Predators on the Southern Patagonian Shelf.

ABSTRACT: The Patagonian Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem supports high levels of biodiversity and endemism and is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world. Despite the important role marine predators play in structuring the ecosystems, areas of high diversity where multiple predators congregate remains poorly known on the Patagonian Shelf. Here, we used biotelemetry and biologging tags to track the movements of six seabird species and three pinniped species breeding at the Falkland Islands. Using Generalized Additive Models, we then modelled these animals' use of space as functions of dynamic and static environmental indices that described their habitat. Based on these models, we mapped the predicted distribution of animals from both sampled and unsampled colonies and thereby identifie

SUBMITTER: Baylis AMM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6560117 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature