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      Decline in abundance and apparent survival rates of fin whales ( Balaenoptera physalus) in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence

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          Abstract

          Estimates of abundance and survivorship provide quantifiable measures to monitor populations and to define and understand their conservation status. This study investigated changes in abundance and survival rates of fin whales ( Balaenoptera physalus) in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence in the context of anthropogenic pressures and changing environmental conditions. A long‐term data set, consisting of 35 years of photo‐identification surveys and comprising more than 5,000 identifications of 507 individuals, formed the basis of this mark–recapture study. Based on model selection using corrected Akaike Information Criterion, the most parsimonious Cormack–Jolly–Seber model included a linear temporal trend in noncalf apparent survival rates with a sharp decline in the last 5 years of the study and a median survival rate of 0.946 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.910–0.967). To account for capture heterogeneity due to divergent patterns of site fidelity, agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis was employed to categorize individuals based on their annual and survey site fidelity indices. However, the negative trend in survivorship remained and was corroborated by a significant decline in the estimated super‐population size from 335 (95% CI 321–348) individuals in 2004–2010 to 291 (95% CI 270–312) individuals in 2010–2016. Concurrently, a negative trend was estimated in recruitment to the population, supported by a sharp decrease in the number of observed calves. Ship strikes and changes in prey availability are potential drivers of the observed decline in fin whale abundance. The combination of clustering methods with mark–recapture represents a flexible way to investigate the effects of site fidelity on demographic variables and is broadly applicable to other individual‐based studies.

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          Modeling Survival and Testing Biological Hypotheses Using Marked Animals: A Unified Approach with Case Studies

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            A General Methodology for the Analysis of Capture-Recapture Experiments in Open Populations

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              AIC Model Selection in Overdispersed Capture-Recapture Data

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                achs@st-andrews.ac.uk
                Journal
                Ecol Evol
                Ecol Evol
                10.1002/(ISSN)2045-7758
                ECE3
                Ecology and Evolution
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                2045-7758
                15 March 2019
                April 2019
                : 9
                : 7 ( doiID: 10.1002/ece3.2019.9.issue-7 )
                : 4231-4244
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] Sea Mammal Research Unit, Scottish Oceans Institute University of St Andrews Fife UK
                [ 2 ] Marine Evolution and Conservation, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences University of Groningen Groningen The Netherlands
                [ 3 ] Mingan Island Cetacean Study St Lambert Québec Canada
                [ 4 ] Center for Coastal Studies Provincetown Massachusetts
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence

                Anna Schleimer, Sea Mammal Research Unit, Scottish Oceans Institute, University of St Andrews, Fife, UK.

                Email: achs@ 123456st-andrews.ac.uk

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9798-5074
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4198-7599
                Article
                ECE35055
                10.1002/ece3.5055
                6468087
                31016001
                cc97c44a-865d-4bdf-b1cc-48e8d66c834c
                © 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

                This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 23 November 2018
                : 16 February 2019
                : 25 February 2019
                Page count
                Figures: 8, Tables: 3, Pages: 14, Words: 11121
                Funding
                Funded by: Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
                Award ID: AFR/11256673
                Categories
                Original Research
                Original Research
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                ece35055
                April 2019
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_NLMPMC version:5.6.2.1 mode:remove_FC converted:16.04.2019

                Evolutionary Biology
                abundance,capture heterogeneity,capture–recapture,fin whale,site fidelity,survival rate,terminal bias

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