Refining seabird marine protected areas by predicting habitat inside foraging range - a case study from the global tropics
Authors: Miller Mark , Hemson Graham , Toit Julie Du , McDougall Andrew , Miller Peter , Mizutani Akira , Trevail Alice , Small Alison , Ravache Andreas , Beard Annalea , Bunce Ashley , Poli Caroline , Surman Chris , Gonzalez-Zamora Diego , Clingham Elizabeth , Vidal Eric , McDuie Fiona , Machovsky-Capuska Gabriel , Cumming Graeme , Humphries Grant , Weimerskirch Henri , Shamoun-Baranes Judy , Henry Leeann , Wood Hannah , Young Hillary , Kohno Hiroyoshi , Gonzalez-Sol�s Jacob , Cecere Jacopo , Veen Jan , Neumann Jessica , SHEPHARD Jill , Green Jonathan , Castillo-Guerrero José , Sommerfeld Julia , Dossa Justine , Bourgeois Karen , Yoda Ken , McLeay Lachlan , Calabrese Licia , Mendez Loriane , Soanes Louise , Nicoll Malcolm , Derhé Mia , Gilmour Morgan , Diop Ngone , James Nicholas , Carr Pete , Austin Rhiannon , Freeman Robin , Clarke Rohan , Mott Rowan , Maxwell Sarah , Saldanha Sarah , Shaffer Scott , Oppel S. , Votier Stephen , Yamamoto Takashi , Militão Teresa , Beger Maria , Congdon Bradley 
Published: July 2023

Conservation of breeding seabirds typically requires detailed data on
where they feed at sea. Ecological niche models (ENMs) can fill data
gaps, but rarely perform well when transferred to new regions.
Alternatively, the foraging radius approach simply encircles the sea
surrounding a breeding seabird colony (a foraging circle), but
overestimates foraging habitat. Here, we investigate whether ENMs can
transfer (predict) foraging niches of breeding tropical seabirds between
global colonies, and whether ENMs can refine foraging circles. We
collate a large global dataset of tropical seabird tracks (12000 trips,
16 species, 60 colonies) to build a comprehensive summary of tropical
seabird foraging ranges and to train ENMs. We interrogate ENM
transferability and assess the confidence with which unsuitable habitat
predicted by ENMs can be excluded from within foraging circles. We apply
this refinement framework to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia to
identify a network of candidate marine protected areas (MPAs) for
seabirds. We found little ability to generalise and transfer breeding
tropical seabird foraging niches across all colonies for any species
(mean AUC: 0.56, range 0.4-0.82). Low global transferability was
partially explained by colony clusters that predicted well internally
but other colony clusters poorly. After refinement with ENMs, foraging
circles still contained 89% of known foraging areas from tracking data,
providing confidence that important foraging habitat was not erroneously
excluded by greater refinement from high transferability ENMs nor minor
refinement from low transferability ENMs. Foraging radii estimated the
total foraging area of the GBR breeding seabird community as 2,941,000
km2, which was refined by excluding between 197,000 km2 and 1,826,000
km2 of unsuitable foraging habitat. ENMs trained on local GBR tracking
achieved superior refinement over globally trained models, demonstrating
the value of local tracking. Our framework demonstrates an effective
method to delineate candidate MPAs for breeding seabirds in data-poor
regions.