For data‐limited fish species, sustainable management frequently relies on biological metrics that are derived from life‐history trait data, as opposed to high‐resolution time series of catch and abundance. These biological metrics are used to assess a species' recovery potential at low population densities, as well as their extinction risk. However, for really data poor species, the life‐history traits required to derive thes...

Aim Ecologically similar species living in sympatry are expected to segregate to reduce the effects of competition where resources are limiting. Segregation from heterospecifics commonly occurs in space, but it is often unknown whether such segregation has underlying environmental causes. Indeed, species could segregate because of different fundamental environmental requirements (i.e., ‘niche divergence’), because competitive...

Forecasting population responses to rapidly changing marine ecosystems requires mechanistic models integrating complex demographic processes, fitted to long time series, across large spatial scales. We used a Bayesian metapopulation model fit to colony census data and climatic covariates spanning 1900–2100 for all Northeast Atlantic colonies of an exemplar seabird, the Northern gannet ( Morus bassanus ) to investigate metapopu...

Data integration, the joint statistical analysis of data from different observation platforms, is pivotal for data‐hungry disciplines such as spatial ecology. Pooled data types obtained from the same underlying process, analyzed jointly, can improve both precision and accuracy in models of species distributions and species–habitat associations. However, the integration of telemetry and spatial survey data has proved elusive be...

Abundance estimation methods that combine several types of data are becoming increasingly common because they yield more accurate and precise parameter estimates and predictions than are possible from a single data source. These beneficial effects result from increasing sample size (through data pooling) and complementarity between different data types. Here, we test whether integrating mark–recapture data with passive acousti...

Marine predator populations are crucial to the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Like many predator taxa, pinnipeds face an increasingly complex array of natural and anthropogenic threats. Understanding the relationship between at-sea processes and trends in abundance at land-based monitoring sites requires robust estimates of at-sea distribution, often on multi-region scales. Such an understanding is critical for effec...

Small petrels are the most abundant seabirds in the Southern Ocean. However, because they breed in burrows on remote and often densely vegetated islands, their colony sizes and conservation status remain poorly known. To estimate the abundance of these species on Bird Island in the Falkland archipelago, we systematically surveyed their breeding burrow density and occupancy across this near-pristine tussac ( Poa flabellata )-co...

The contribution of interspecific competition to structuring population and community dynamics remains controversial and poorly tested. Interspecific competition has long been thought to influence the structure of migrant–resident bird communities in winter, yet experimental evidence remains elusive. The arrival of billions of songbirds into Neotropical habitats, where they co‐exist with residents, provides a unique opportunit...

The two dominant approaches for the analysis of species–habitat associations in animals have been shown to reach divergent conclusions. Models fitted from the viewpoint of an individual (step selection functions), once scaled up, do not agree with models fitted from a population viewpoint (resource selection functions [RSFs]). We explain this fundamental incompatibility, and propose a solution by introducing to the animal move...

Statistical models of habitat preference and species distribution (e.g., Resource Selection Functions and Maximum Entropy approaches) perform a quantitative comparison of the use of space with the availability of all habitats in an animal's environment. However, not all of space is accessible all of the time to all individuals, so availability is in fact determined by limitations in animal perception and mobility. Therefore, m...

Habitat preference maps are a way of representing animals' space use in two dimensions. For marine animals, the third dimension is an important aspect of spatial ecology. We used dive data from seven gray seals Halichoerus grypus (a primarily benthic forager) collected with GPS phone tags (Sea Mammal Research Unit) to investigate the distribution of the maximum depth visited in each dive. We modeled maximum dive depth as a fun...

Recent technological advances have permitted the collection of detailed animal location and ancillary biotelemetry data that facilitate inference about animal movement and associated behaviors. However, these rich sources of individual information, location, and biotelemetry data, are typically analyzed independently, with population‐level inferences remaining largely post hoc. We describe a hierarchical modeling approach, whi...

We discuss hidden Markov‐type models for fitting a variety of multistate random walks to wildlife movement data. Discrete‐time hidden Markov models (HMMs) achieve considerable computational gains by focusing on observations that are regularly spaced in time, and for which the measurement error is negligible. These conditions are often met, in particular for data related to terrestrial animals, so that a likelihood‐based HMM ap...

The Mediterranean monk seal gives birth almost exclusively in coastal caves. Given its critical conservation status, the identification and protection of such sites is important for the survival of the species. From 1990 to 2004 we collected data on physical and environmental variables and monitored pupping events in thirty‐four coastal caves in Greece. We modeled the probability of cave occupancy as a function of the properti...