Publications by authors named "Douglas J McCauley"

After the near-complete cessation of commercial whaling, ship collisions have emerged as a primary threat to large whales, but knowledge of collision risk is lacking across most of the world's oceans. We compiled a dataset of 435,000 whale locations to generate global distribution models for four globally ranging species. We then combined >35 billion positions from 176,000 ships to produce a global estimate of whale-ship collision risk.

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Plastic production and plastic pollution have a negative effect on our environment, environmental justice, and climate change. Using detailed global and regional plastics datasets coupled with socioeconomic data, we employ machine learning to predict that, without intervention, annual mismanaged plastic waste will nearly double to 121 million metric tonnes (Mt) [100 to 139 Mt 95% confidence interval] by 2050. Annual greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic system are projected to grow by 37% to 3.

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Advancements in space-based ocean observation and computational data processing techniques have demonstrated transformative value for managing living resources, biodiversity, and ecosystems of the ocean. We synthesize advancements in leveraging satellite-derived insights to better understand and manage fishing, an emerging revolution of marine industrialization, ocean hazards, sea surface dynamics, benthic ecosystems, wildlife via electronic tracking, and direct observations of ocean megafauna. We consider how diverse space-based data sources can be better coupled to modernize and improve ocean management.

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Article Synopsis
  • Sharks play many important roles in their ecosystems, like being predators and helping transport nutrients.
  • Sadly, overfishing and other human activities have hurt shark populations, which changes how ecosystems work.
  • To fix the problems caused by losing sharks, we need to manage their populations better and understand all the ways they help the environment.
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Direct exploitation through fishing is driving dramatic declines of wildlife populations in ocean environments, particularly for predatory and large-bodied taxa. Despite wide recognition of this pattern and well-established consequences of such trophic downgrading on ecosystem function, there have been few empirical studies examining the effects of fishing on whole system trophic architecture. Understanding these kinds of structural impacts is especially important in coral reef ecosystems-often heavily fished and facing multiple stressors.

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  • Ecosystems, especially coral reefs, are recovering from human impacts such as climate change and habitat destruction, and coral recruitment is vital for this recovery.
  • The research at Palmyra Atoll studied how reef fishes influence coral recruitment through direct consumption and indirect habitat changes over three years.
  • Findings show that while reef fishes initially aid coral recovery, their influence diminishes over time, suggesting that environmental factors eventually play a more crucial role.
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To fulfill sustainable development goals, many countries are expanding efforts to conserve ecologically and societally critical coastal ecosystems. Although megafauna profoundly affect the functioning of ecosystems, they are neglected as a key component in the conservation scheme for coastal ecosystems in many geographic contexts. We reveal a rich diversity of extant megafauna associated with all major types of coastal ecosystems in China, including 218 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, cephalopods, and fish across terrestrial and marine environments.

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Consumers play an integral role in mediating ecological succession-the change in community composition over time. As consumer populations are facing rapid decline in ecosystems around the world, understanding of their ecological role is becoming increasingly urgent. Increased understanding of how changes in consumer populations may influence community variability across space and turnover through time during succession is particularly important for coral reefs, which are among the most threatened ecosystems globally, and where fishes play vital roles in structuring benthic succession.

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  • Slowing down ships can help minimize the risks and harm to whales in busy ocean environments.
  • This approach addresses the issue of increasing noise pollution from maritime traffic.
  • Reducing ship speeds is one of several strategies being explored to protect whale populations.
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  • New satellite remote sensing and machine learning techniques are enhancing the ability to monitor global biodiversity efficiently and accurately.
  • A deep learning pipeline was developed to automatically identify and count migratory ungulates (wildebeest and zebra) in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem using high-resolution satellite imagery, yielding impressive results.
  • The study shows that these advanced technologies can accurately count large populations of mammals across diverse habitats, potentially improving our understanding of animal behavior and ecology.
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Variation in behavior within marine and terrestrial species can influence the functioning of the ecosystems they inhabit. However, the contribution of social behavior to ecosystem function remains underexplored. Many coral reef fish species provide potentially insightful models for exploring how social behavior shapes ecological function because they exhibit radical intraspecific variation in sociality within a shared habitat.

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The Kiribati 2019 Integrated Household Income and Expenditure Survey (Integrated HIES) embeds novel ecological and human health research into an ongoing social and economic survey infrastructure implemented by the Pacific Community in partnership with national governments. This study seeks to describe the health status of a large, nationally representative sample of a geographically and socially diverse I-Kiribati population through multiple clinical measurements and detailed socio-economic surveys, while also conducting supporting food systems research on ecological, social, and institutional drivers of change. The specific hypotheses within this research relate to access to seafood and the potential nutritional and health benefits of these foods.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study analyzed extinction threats in terrestrial vertebrates by evaluating ecological traits of 18,016 species and examining factors like habitat, locomotion, and feeding modes.
  • It identified specific groups at higher risk, such as cave-dwelling amphibians and arboreal quadrupedal mammals, with primary threats being agriculture, logging, and invasive species.
  • The research suggests moving towards trait-focused conservation strategies to safeguard functional diversity and maintain ecosystem health globally.
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Preexploitation shark baselines and the history of human impact on coral reef-associated shark communities in the Caribbean are tpoorly understood. We recovered shark dermal denticles from mid-Holocene (∼7 ky ago) and modern reef sediments in Bocas del Toro, Caribbean Panama, to reconstruct an empirical shark baseline before major human impact and to quantify how much the modern shark community in the region had shifted from this historical reference point. We found that denticle accumulation rates, a proxy for shark abundance, declined by 71% since the mid-Holocene.

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Large marine protected areas (MPAs) of unprecedented size have recently been established across the global oceans, yet their ability to meet conservation objectives is debated. Key areas of debate include uncertainty over nations' abilities to enforce fishing bans across vast, remote regions and the intensity of human impacts before and after MPA implementation. We used a recently developed vessel tracking data set (produced using Automatic Identification System detections) to quantify the response of industrial fishing fleets to 5 of the largest MPAs established in the Pacific Ocean since 2013.

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Group living is a common strategy used by fishes to improve their fitness. While sociality is associated with many benefits in natural environments, including predator avoidance, this behaviour may be maladaptive in the Anthropocene. Humans have become the dominant predator in many marine systems, with modern fishing gear developed to specifically target groups of schooling species.

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As a result of their extensive home ranges and slow population growth rates, predators have often been perceived to suffer higher risks of extinction than other trophic groups. Our study challenges this extinction-risk paradigm by quantitatively comparing patterns of extinction risk across different trophic groups of mammals, birds, and reptiles. We found that trophic level and body size were significant factors that influenced extinction risk in all taxa.

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The obligate dependency of the common hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius, on water makes them particularly vulnerable to hydrological disturbances. Despite the threats facing this at-risk species, there is a lack of information regarding H. amphibius spatial ecology.

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Understanding which species and ecosystems will be most severely affected by warming as climate change advances is important for guiding conservation and management. Both marine and terrestrial fauna have been affected by warming but an explicit comparison of physiological sensitivity between the marine and terrestrial realms has been lacking. Assessing how close populations live to their upper thermal limits has been challenging, in part because extreme temperatures frequently drive demographic responses and yet fauna can use local thermal refugia to avoid extremes.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Removal of hippopotamuses led to reduced grassland height and increased grass leafiness, while also impacting soil nutrient levels, though it did not significantly affect plant species diversity.
  • * Findings suggest that the loss of hippos, due to their ecological importance, could lead to significant changes in the ecosystem, emphasizing the need to protect this vulnerable species.
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The patterns by which different nations share global fisheries influence outcomes for food security, trajectories of economic development, and competition between industrial and small-scale fishing. We report patterns of industrial fishing effort for vessels flagged to higher- and lower-income nations, in marine areas within and beyond national jurisdiction, using analyses of high-resolution fishing vessel activity data. These analyses reveal global dominance of industrial fishing by wealthy nations.

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