Group living determines how animals interact with others and their habitat. Elephant fish ( Callorhinchus milii ) are chimaeras (Class Chondrichthyes, subclass Holocephali) that migrate to coastal waters for reproduction throughout its southern Australian range. However, there is limited information about how they co-utilize these areas. This study used social network analysis (SNA) and passive acoustic monitoring data to exam...

Satellite tagging of whale sharks ( Rhincodon typus) has typically focused on juvenile males which dominate coastal aggregation sites, with limited data on the movements of females. We satellite-tagged 39 whale sharks of 3.75–9.27 m total length at Ningaloo reef between 2015 and 2018 with a roughly equivalent sex ratio (Male = 20, Female = 18, Unknown = 1).We aimed to identify differences in horizontal and vertical movements b...

Levels of dissolved oxygen in open ocean and coastal waters are decreasing (ocean deoxygenation), with poorly understood effects on marine megafauna. All of the more than 1000 species of elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, and rays) are obligate water breathers, with a variety of life‐history strategies and oxygen requirements. This review demonstrates that although many elasmobranchs typically avoid hypoxic water, they also appear...

Predator–prey interactions are key drivers in structuring communities, with the potential to substantially impact the whole ecosystem when important predators and prey are involved. Squid are voracious predators and also important prey for other top predators. To date, the available data suggests that under current and projected ocean warming, the behaviour of ectotherms could be modified (for example, through individual movem...

Within the set of risk factors that compromise the conservation of marine biodiversity, one of the least understood concerns is the noise produced by human operations at sea and from land. Many aspects of how noise and other forms of energy may impact the natural balance of the oceans are still unstudied. Substantial attention has been devoted in the last decades to determine the sensitivity to noise of marine mammals—especial...

Predatory fishes are a major component of many tropical fisheries, although little is known about their diet and trophic structure, which can hinder effective management. We used stable isotopes δ 15 N and δ 13 C in conjunction with dietary prey items of five fishes ( Lutjanus sebae , Lethrinus punctulatus , Epinephelus areolatus , Epinephelus multinotatus , and Plectropomus maculatus ) to describe the diet and trophic structu...

Marine ecosystems and their associated biodiversity sustain life on Earth and hold intrinsic value. Critical marine ecosystem services include maintenance of global oxygen and carbon cycles, production of food and energy, and sustenance of human wellbeing. However marine ecosystems are swiftly being degraded due to the unsustainable use of marine environments and a rapidly changing climate. The fundamental challenge for the fu...

Delineation of population structure (i.e. stocks) is crucial to successfully manage exploited species and to address conservation concerns for threatened species. Fish migration and associated movements are key mechanisms through which discrete populations mix and are thus important determinants of population structure. Detailed information on fish migration and movements is becoming more accessible through advances in telemet...

Consumption is the primary trophic interaction in ecosystems and its accurate estimation is required for reliable ecosystem modeling. When estimating consumption, species’ diets are commonly assumed to be the average of those that occur among habitats, seasons, and life stages which introduces uncertainty and error into consumption rate estimates. We present a case study of a teleost (Yellowfin Bream Acanthopagrus australis )...

Some species may have a larger role than others in the transfer of complex effects of multiple human stressors, such as changes in biomass, through marine food webs. We devised a novel approach to identify such species. We constructed annual interaction‐effect networks (IENs) of the simulated changes in biomass between species of the southeastern Australian marine system. Each annual IEN was composed of the species linked by e...

We have little empirical evidence of how large‐scale overlaps between large numbers of marine species may have altered in response to human impacts. Here, we synthesized all available distribution data (>1 million records) since 1992 for 61 species of the East Australian marine ecosystem, a global hot spot of ocean warming and continuing fisheries exploitation. Using a novel approach, we constructed networks of the annual chan...