Monitoring marine populations and communities: methods dealing with imperfect detectability

Effective monitoring of populations and communities is a prerequisite for ecosystem-based management of marine areas. However, monitoring programs often neglect important sources of error and thus can lead to biased estimations, spurious conclusions, and false management actions. One such source of error is imperfect detectability, i.e. inability of investigators to detect all individuals or all species in a surveyed area. Although there has been great effort to develop monitoring methods that account for imperfect detectability, the application of such methods in the marine environment is not as apparent. Plot sampling is by far the most commonly applied method for biological monitoring in the marine environment, yet it largely ignores detectability issues. However, distance sampling, mark-recapture methods, repeated presence/absence surveys for occupancy estimation, and removal methods, are approaches developed that do estimate detection probabilities and provide unbiased estimations of state variables. Herein, these methods and the relevant tools for their application in studies on marine populations and communities are critically reviewed, aiming to assist marine biologists and managers to understand the limitations and pitfalls associated with some approaches and to select the best available methods for their monitoring needs.

KATSANEVAKIS Stylianos Marios;  WEBER Anke;  PIPITONE Carlo;  LEOPOLD Mardik;  CRONIN Michelle;  SCHEIDAT Meike;  DOYLE Thomas;  LENE Buhl-Mortensen;  BUHL-MORTENSEN Pål;  D'ANNA Giovanni;  DE BOOIS Ingeborg;  DALPADADO Padmini;  DAMALAS Dimitrios;  FIORENTINO Fabio;  GAROFALO Germana;  GIACALONE Vincenzo Maximiliano;  HAWLEY Kate;  ISSARIS Yiannis;  JANSEN Jeroen;  KNIGHT Carolyn M.;  KNITTWEIS Leyla;  KRÖNCKE Ingrid;  MIRTO Simone;  MUXIKA Iñigo;  REISS Henning;  SKJOLDAL Hein Rune;  VÖGE Sandra; 

2012-07-09

INTER-RESEARCH

JRC67352

1864-7790,   

http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/ab/v16/n1/p31-52/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC67352,   

10.3354/ab00426,