Fishers aim to optimise cost–benefit ratios of their behaviour when exploiting resources. Avoidance of interactions with marine predators (i.e. their feeding on catches in fishing gear, known as depredation) has recently become an important component of their decisions. How fishers minimise these interactions whilst maximising fishing success is poorly understood. This issue is addressed in a sub‐Antarctic, long‐line fishery c...

Aim Deep‐diving cetaceans are oceanic species exposed to multiple anthropogenic pressures including high intensity underwater noise, and knowledge of their distribution is crucial to manage their conservation. Due to intrinsic low densities, wide distribution ranges and limited presence at the sea surface, these species are rarely sighted. Pooling data from multiple visual surveys sharing a common line‐transect methodology can...

Aim Our knowledge of cetacean distributions is impeded by large data‐gaps worldwide, particularly at tropical latitudes. This study aims to (1) find generic relationships between cetaceans and their habitats in a range of tropical waters, and (2) extrapolate cetacean densities in a circumtropical belt extending far beyond surveyed regions. Location Pelagic, circumtropical. Methods Aerial surveys were conducted over three regio...

Aim Processes and variables measured in ecology are almost always spatially autocorrelated, potentially leading to the choice of overly complex models when performing variable selection. One way to solve this problem is to account for residual spatial autocorrelation ( RSA ) for each subset of variables considered and then use a classical model selection criterion such as the A kaike information criterion ( AIC ). However, thi...

Dendritic ecological networks ( DEN s) are a unique form of ecological networks that exhibit a dendritic network topology (e.g. stream and cave networks or plant architecture). DEN s have a dual spatial representation; as points within the network and as points in geographical space. Consequently, some analytical methods used to quantify relationships in other types of ecological networks, or in 2‐D space, may be inadequate fo...