Uncertainty in empirical estimates of marine larval connectivity
Uncertainty in empirical estimates of marine larval connectivity
复制标题
海洋幼虫连通性经验估计的不确定性
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
C. Lett
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
D. Kaplan;M. Cuif;C. Fauvelot;L. Vigliola;T. Nguyen;Josina Tiavouane;C. Lett
尽管我们的能力，以衡量海洋幼虫的连接（即运输模式的海洋幼虫从产卵到定居点）和这些测量的生态和管理问题的重要性，海洋幼虫连接的实验估计的不确定性已给予很少的关注。我们审查潜在的不确定性来源的经验幼虫连接性研究和贝叶斯统计方法估计这些不确定性的基础上，在标记-再捕获和遗传学文献的标准技术。这些方法在现有的R包中实现，用于处理连接数据ConnMatTools，并应用于一些已发布的连接估计。我们发现，在目的地收集的定居者的小样本量是一个主要来源的不确定性，在许多已发表的结果连接估计。例如，相对连通性的95%置信区间的宽度（其值必须在0和1之间）在许多已发表的连通性结果中超过0.5，使得使用单个结果得出海洋种群相对封闭或开放的结论变得复杂。这种“小样本量”的不确定性是显着的，即使是对产卵鱼和定居者的几乎详尽的采样研究。虽然在文献中基本上被忽略，但这种不确定性的大小很容易评估。今后需要更好地对这种不确定性和其他不确定性进行问责，以便海洋幼体连通性研究能够实现其提供重要生态见解和通报管理问题（例如与海洋保护区网络设计和被开发生物种群结构有关的问题）的承诺。除了使用这里开发的统计方法，未来的研究应该一致地评估和报告少量的关键因素，如产卵器和定居者采样的穷尽性，以及遗传研究中目标物种的交配结构。
Despite major advances in our capacity to measure marine larval connectivity (i.e. the pattern of transport of marine larvae from spawning to settlement sites) and the importance of these measurements for ecological and management questions, uncertainty in experimental estimates of marine larval connectivity has been given little attention. We review potential uncertainty sources in empirical larval connectivity studies and develop Bayesian statistical methods for estimating these uncertainties based on standard techniques in the mark-recapture and genetics literature. These methods are implemented in an existing R package for working with connectivity data, ConnMatTools, and applied to a number of published connectivity estimates. We find that the small sample size of collected settlers at destination sites is a dominant source of uncertainty in connectivity estimates in many published results. For example, widths of 95% CIs for relative connectivity, the value of which is necessarily between 0 and 1, exceeded 0.5 for many published connectivity results, complicating using individual results to conclude that marine populations are relatively closed or open. This "small sample size" uncertainty is significant even for studies with near-exhaustive sampling of spawners and settlers. Though largely ignored in the literature, the magnitude of this uncertainty is straightforward to assess. Better accountability of this and other uncertainties is needed in the future so that marine larval connectivity studies can fulfill their promises of providing important ecological insights and informing management questions (e.g. related to marine protected area network design, and stock structure of exploited organisms). In addition to using the statistical methods developed here, future studies should consistently evaluate and report a small number of critical factors , such as the exhaustivity of spawner and settler sampling, and the mating structure of target species in genetic studies.