The foraging ecology of greyheaded mollymawks at Marion Island: in relation to known longline fishing activity

Incidental mortality due to longline fishing has been implicated as the main cause for the global population decline in grey-headed mollymawks (Thalassarche chrysostoma). Two of these fisheries, within the potential foraging range of grey-headed mollymawks breeding on Marion Island, have increased drastically over the past 5–10 years. In order to understand the impacts of these fisheries on the grey-headed mollymawk population breeding on Marion Island, we studied their foraging ecology by tracking their foraging trips and sampling their diets. During the incubation stage, birds made long foraging trips, mostly towards the subtropical convergence and sub-Antarctic zones, bringing them into contact with areas of intense southern blue-fin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) longline fishing. Females spent a higher proportion of their time within these areas than males, thus exposing themselves to a higher risk of incidental mortality from this fishery. During the early chick-rearing stage, foraging trips were shorter and to the southwest of the island in the Polar frontal and Antarctic zones, thus avoiding any contact with the southern blue-fin tuna industry. However, short foraging trips (<2 days) were made within the boundary of known Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) longline sets around Marion Island. Males made a higher proportion of short foraging trips and spent more time within the boundaries of the toothfish fishery than females. These differences may account for the male-biased mortality of grey-headed mollymawks observed in the toothfish fishery around Marion Island. Although a decrease in the annual breeding population has not been detected on Marion Island as yet, we warn that the methods used to detect these changes are inaccurate in measuring short term population changes (<10 years) and that the impacts of these fisheries may already have altered the demographic structure of this population

Mapping the potential ranges of major plant invaders in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland using climatic suitability

Most national or regional initiatives aimed at managing biological invasions lack objective protocols for prioritizing invasive species and areas based on likely future dimensions of spread. South Africa has one of the most ambitious national programmes for managing plant invasions in the world. There is, however, no protocol for assessing the likely future spread patterns needed to inform medium- to longterm planning. This paper presents an assessment of the climatic correlates of distribution of 71 important invasive alien plants, and an analysis of the implications of these findings for future invasions in different vegetation types in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland over the next few decades. We used a variant of climatic envelope models (CEMs) based on the Mahalanobis distance to derive climatic suitability surfaces for each species. CEMs were developed using the first three principal components derived from an analysis of seven climatic variables. Most species are currently confined to 10% or less of the region, but could potentially invade up to 40%. Depending on the species, between 2% and 79% of the region is climatically suitable for species to invade, and some areas were suitable for up to 45 plant invaders. Over one third of the modelled species have limited potential to substantially expand their distribution. About 20% of the vegetation types have low invasion potential where fewer than five species can invade, and about 10% have high invasion potential, being potentially suitable for more than 25 of the plant invaders. Our results suggest that management of the invasive plant species that are currently most widespread should focus on reducing densities, for example through biological control programmes, rather than controlling range expansions. We also identify areas of the region that may require additional management focus in the future.DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biolog

Gridded 20-year climate parameterization of Africa and South America for a stochastic weather generator (CLIGEN)

CLIGEN is a stochastic weather generator that creates statistically representative timeseries of daily and sub-daily point-scale weather variables from observed monthly statistics and other parameters. CLIGEN precipitation timeseries are used as climate input for various risk-assessment modelling applications as an alternative to observe long-term, high temporal resolution records. Here, we queried gridded global climate datasets (TerraClimate, ERA5, GPM-IMERG, and GLDAS) to estimate various 20-year climate statistics and obtain complete CLIGEN input parameter sets with coverage of the African and South American continents at 0.25 arc degree resolution. The estimation of CLIGEN precipitation parameters was informed by a ground-based dataset of >10,000 locations worldwide. The ground observations provided target values to fit regression models that downscale CLIGEN precipitation input parameters. Aside from precipitation parameters, CLIGEN’s parameters for temperature, solar radiation, etc. were in most cases directly calculated according to the original global datasets. Cross-validation for estimated precipitation parameters quantified errors that resulted from applying the estimation approach in a predictive fashion. Based on all training data, the RMSE was 2.23 mm for the estimated monthly average single-event accumulation and 4.70 mm/hr for monthly maximum 30-min intensity. This dataset facilitates exploration of hydrological and soil erosional hypotheses across Africa and South America. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis Group and Science Press on behalf of the International Society for Digital Earth, supported by the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, and CASEarth Strategic Priority Research Programme.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]