The retrospective analysis of Antarctic tracking data project

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for multiple species of Antarctic meso- and top-predators to identify Areas of Ecological Significance. These datasets and accompanying syntheses provide a greater understanding of fundamental ecosystem processes in the Southern Ocean, support modelling of predator distributions under future climate scenarios and create inputs that can be incorporated into decision making processes by management authorities. In this data paper, we present the compiled tracking data from research groups that have worked in the Antarctic since the 1990s. The data are publicly available through biodiversity.aq and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System. The archive includes tracking data from over 70 contributors across 12 national Antarctic programs, and includes data from 17 predator species, 4060 individual animals, and over 2.9 million observed locations

Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (2018): 3072-3077, doi:10.1073/pnas.1716137115.The extent of increasing anthropogenic impacts on large marine vertebrates partly depends on the animals’ movement patterns. Effective conservation requires identification of the key drivers of movement including intrinsic properties and extrinsic constraints associated with the dynamic nature of the environments the animals inhabit. However, the relative importance of intrinsic versus extrinsic factors remains elusive. We analyse a global dataset of 2.8 million locations from > 2,600 tracked individuals across 50 marine vertebrates evolutionarily separated by millions of years and using different locomotion modes (fly, swim, walk/paddle). Strikingly, movement patterns show a remarkable convergence, being strongly conserved across species and independent of body length and mass, despite these traits ranging over 10 orders of magnitude among the species studied. This represents a fundamental difference between marine and terrestrial vertebrates not previously identified, likely linked to the reduced costs of locomotion in water. Movement patterns were primarily explained by the interaction between species-specific traits and the habitat(s) they move through, resulting in complex movement patterns when moving close to coasts compared to more predictable patterns when moving in open oceans. This distinct difference may be associated with greater complexity within coastal micro-habitats, highlighting a critical role of preferred habitat in shaping marine vertebrate global movements. Efforts to develop understanding of the characteristics of vertebrate movement should consider the habitat(s) through which they move to identify how movement patterns will alter with forecasted severe ocean changes, such as reduced Arctic sea ice cover, sea level rise and declining oxygen content.Workshops funding granted by the UWA Oceans Institute, AIMS, and KAUST. AMMS was supported by an ARC Grant DE170100841 and an IOMRC (UWA, AIMS, CSIRO) fellowship; JPR by MEDC (FPU program, Spain); DWS by UK NERC and Save Our Seas Foundation; NQ by FCT (Portugal); MMCM by a CAPES fellowship (Ministry of Education)

The retrospective analysis of Antarctic tracking data project

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for multiple species of Antarctic meso- and top-predators to identify Areas of Ecological Significance. These datasets and accompanying syntheses provide a greater understanding of fundamental ecosystem processes in the Southern Ocean, support modelling of predator distributions under future climate scenarios and create inputs that can be incorporated into decision making processes by management authorities. In this data paper, we present the compiled tracking data from research groups that have worked in the Antarctic since the 1990s. The data are publicly available through biodiversity.aq and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System. The archive includes tracking data from over 70 contributors across 12 national Antarctic programs, and includes data from 17 predator species, 4060 individual animals, and over 2.9 million observed locations.Supplementary Figure S1: Filtered location data (black) and tag deployment locations (red) for each species. Maps are Lambert Azimuthal projections extending from 90° S to 20° S.Supplementary Table S1: Names and coordinates of the major study sites in the Southern Ocean and on the Antarctic Continent where tracking devices were deployed on the selected species (indicated by their 4-letter codes in the last column).Online Table 1: Description of fields (column names) in the metadata and data files.Supranational committees and organisations including the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Life Science Group and BirdLife International. National institutions and foundations, including but not limited to Argentina (Dirección Nacional del Antártico), Australia (Australian Antarctic program; Australian Research Council; Sea World Research and Rescue Foundation Inc., IMOS is a national collaborative research infrastructure, supported by the Australian Government and operated by a consortium of institutions as an unincorporated joint venture, with the University of Tasmania as Lead Agent), Belgium (Belgian Science Policy Office, EU Lifewatch ERIC), Brazil (Brazilian Antarctic Programme; Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq/MCTI) and CAPES), France (Agence Nationale de la Recherche; Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB; www.fondationbiodiversite.fr) in the context of the CESAB project “RAATD”; Fondation Total; Institut Paul-Emile Victor; Programme Zone Atelier de Recherches sur l’Environnement Antarctique et Subantarctique; Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises), Germany (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg - Institute for Advanced Study), Italy (Italian National Antarctic Research Program; Ministry for Education University and Research), Japan (Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition; JSPS Kakenhi grant), Monaco (Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco), New Zealand (Ministry for Primary Industries - BRAG; Pew Charitable Trusts), Norway (Norwegian Antarctic Research Expeditions; Norwegian Research Council), Portugal (Foundation for Science and Technology), South Africa (Department of Environmental Affairs; National Research Foundation; South African National Antarctic Programme), UK (Darwin Plus; Ecosystems Programme at the British Antarctic Survey; Natural Environment Research Council; WWF), and USA (U.S. AMLR Program of NOAA Fisheries; US Office of Polar Programs).http://www.nature.com/sdataam2021Mammal Research Institut

Populations and Interventions for Palliative and End-of-Life Care: A Systematic Review

ImportanceEvidence supports palliative care effectiveness. Given workforce constraints and the costs of new services, payers and providers need help to prioritize their investments. They need to know which patients to target, which personnel to hire, and which services best improve outcomes.ObjectiveTo inform how payers and providers should identify patients with "advanced illness" and the specific interventions they should implement, we reviewed the evidence to identify (1) individuals appropriate for palliative care and (2) elements of health service interventions (personnel involved, use of multidisciplinary teams, and settings of care) effective in achieving better outcomes for patients, caregivers, and the healthcare system.Evidence reviewSystematic searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews databases (1/1/2001-1/8/2015).ResultsRandomized controlled trials (124) met inclusion criteria. The majority of studies in cancer (49%, 38 of 77 studies) demonstrated statistically significant patient or caregiver outcomes (e.g., p < 0.05), as did those in congestive heart failure (CHF) (62%, 13 of 21), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; 58%, 11 of 19), and dementia (60%, 15 of 25). Most prognostic criteria used clinicians' judgment (73%, 22 of 30). Most interventions included a nurse (70%, 69 of 98), and many were nurse-only (39%, 27 of 69). Social workers were well represented, and home-based approaches were common (56%, 70 of 124). Home interventions with visits were more effective than those without (64%, 28 of 44; vs. 46%, 12 of 26). Interventions improved communication and care planning (70%, 12 of 18), psychosocial health (36%, 12 of 33, for depressive symptoms; 41%, 9 of 22, for anxiety), and patient (40%, 8 of 20) and caregiver experiences (63%, 5 of 8). Many interventions reduced hospital use (65%, 11 of 17), but most other economic outcomes, including costs, were poorly characterized. Palliative care teams did not reliably lower healthcare costs (20%, 2 of 10).ConclusionsPalliative care improves cancer, CHF, COPD, and dementia outcomes. Effective models include nurses, social workers, and home-based components, and a focus on communication, psychosocial support, and the patient or caregiver experience. High-quality research on intervention costs and cost outcomes in palliative care is limited

Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans

Data and code used in Sequeira et al., "Convergence of marine megafauna movement patterns in coastal and open oceans", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018).Peer reviewe