Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Conservation Science and Practice

Abstract

Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus, hereafter tarpon) are facing a multitude of stressors and are considered Vulnerable by the IUCN; however, significant gaps remain in our understanding of tarpon space use and movement. From 2018 to 2019, citizen scientists facilitated tagging of 23 tarpon with SPOT tags to examine space use and movement across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Movement-based kernel densities were used to estimate simplified biased random bridge-based utilization distributions and a joint move persistence model was used to estimate a behavioral index for each fish. Tarpon showed consistent east–west movement from the Alabama/Florida border to Louisiana, and utilization distributions were highest in the Mississippi River Delta. Move persistence was highest in Alabama and Mississippi and lowest in Louisiana. Our examination of tarpon space use and movement indicates that Louisiana is a critical, yet understudied, part of their range.

DOI

10.1111/csp2.331

Publication Date

2021

Department

Marine and Environmental Sciences

Comments

This article was published in the journal of Conservation Science and Practice by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of the Society for Conservation Biology.

A link to the online published versions can be found here:

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/csp2.331

This article is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license [CC BY 4.0], which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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