No abstract

The distributions of migratory species in the ocean span local, national and international jurisdictions. Across these ecologically interconnected regions, migratory marine species interact with anthropogenic stressors throughout their lives. Migratory connectivity, the geographical linking of individuals and populations throughout their migratory cycles, influences how spatial and temporal dynamics of stressors affect migratory animals and scale up to influence population abundance, distribution and species persistence. Population declines of many migratory marine species have led to calls for connectivity knowledge, especially insights from animal tracking studies, to be more systematically and synthetically incorporated into decision-making. Inclusion of migratory connectivity in the design of conservation and management measures is critical to ensure they are appropriate for the level of risk associated with various degrees of connectivity. Three mechanisms exist to incorporate migratory connectivity into international marine policy which guides conservation implementation: site-selection criteria, network design criteria and policy recommendations. Here, we review the concept of migratory connectivity and its use in international policy, and describe the Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean system, a migratory connectivity evidence-base for the ocean. We propose that without such collaboration focused on migratory connectivity, efforts to effectively conserve these critical species across jurisdictions will have limited effect.

While ecologists have long recognized the influence of spatial resolution on species distribution models (SDMs), they have given relatively little attention to the influence of temporal resolution. Considering temporal resolutions is critical in distribution modelling of highly mobile marine animals, as they interact with dynamic oceanographic processes that vary at time-scales from seconds to decades. We guide ecologists in selecting temporal resolutions that best match ecological questions and ecosystems, and managers in applying these models. We group the temporal resolutions of environmental variables used in SDMs into three classes: instantaneous, contemporaneous and climatological. We posit that animal associations with fine-scale and ephemeral | 1099MANNOCCI et Al. | INTRODUCTIONHighly mobile marine animals such as marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles and fish are unevenly distributed in the ocean. Ecologists have long sought to understand and predict their patterns of distributions, particularly for commercially valuable species subject to exploitation (Lehodey, Bertignac, Hampton, Lewis, & Picaut, 1997) and for protected species vulnerable to incidental harm (Reilly, 1990). They often employ species distribution models (SDMs) that statistically relate distribution patterns to environmental conditions by linking animal observations to environmental variables. SDMs have been successfully used to examine many ecological, management and conservation questions (Elith & Leathwick, 2009). In particular, they have been widely used to explain and predict distribution patterns of highly mobile marine animals in a variety of ecosystems (Benson et al., 2011;Forney, Becker, Foley, Barlow, & Oleson, 2015;Hartog, Hobday, Matear, & Feng, 2011;Mannocci et al., 2014).It has become apparent that the hierarchical structure of processes in the marine environment drives the distribution and movement patterns of marine animals at multiple spatio-temporal scales (Benoit-Bird, Battaile, Nordstrom, & Trites, 2013;Fauchald, Erikstad, & Skarsfjord, 2000;Fauchald & Tveraa, 2006;Fritz, Said, & Weimerskirch, 2003;Pinaud & Weimerskirch, 2005) (Figure 1). At fine scales, animals track ephemeral prey patches that extend over tens of metres to satisfy their energy requirements (Goldbogen et al., 2008;Heaslip, Iverson, Bowen, & James, 2012 (Benson et al., 2011;Hobday & Hartog, 2014;Tew Kai & Marsac, 2010). At broad scales, animals associate with persistent water masses and current systems that extend over thousands of kilometres and delimit their geographic ranges or migration routes (Jaquet, Whitehead, & Lewis, 1996;Reygondeau et al., 2012;Shillinger et al., 2008). Thus, the distributions of highly mobile marine animals appear determined by both short-term ocean variability and persistent patterns of longer-term ocean climate.Researchers use a variety of methods to obtain synoptic data on marine animal distributions and the marine environment at a wide range of spatial and temporal extents ( Figure 2, see Appendix S1 in Supporti...

No abstract

In 2004, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) addressed a United Nations (UN) call for area-based planning, including for marine-protected areas that resulted in a global effort to describe ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs). We summarized the results, assessed their consistency, and evaluated the process developed by the Secretariat of the CBD to engage countries and experts in 9 regional