Publications by authors named "Bruce Dyer"

Understanding changes in abundance is crucial for conservation, but population growth rates often vary over space and time. We use 40 years of count data (1979-2019) and Bayesian state-space models to assess the African penguin population under IUCN Red List Criterion A. We deconstruct the overall decline in time and space to identify where urgent conservation action is needed.

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King penguins make up the bulk of avian biomass on a number of sub-Antarctic islands where they have a large functional effect on terrestrial and marine ecosystems. The same applies at Marion Island where a substantial proportion of the world population breeds. In spite of their obvious ecological importance, the at-sea distribution and behavior of this population has until recently remained entirely unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • Human activities significantly impact marine ecosystems, making it challenging to assess how fishing and environmental changes affect non-target predators like the Bank Cormorant.
  • Researchers studied the relationship between the cormorant's breeding population and the availability of its prey, the west coast rock lobster, using extensive data and modeling to identify critical spatial scales for management.
  • Findings revealed that cormorant populations thrived with lobster availability in certain areas but struggled in regions with depleted stocks, emphasizing the need for targeted marine protection that benefits predators throughout their life cycles.
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Climate change and fisheries are transforming the oceans, but we lack a complete understanding of their ecological impact [1-3]. Environmental degradation can cause maladaptive habitat selection, inducing ecological traps with profound consequences for biodiversity [4-6]. However, whether ecological traps operate in marine systems is unclear [7].

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