Journal
MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES
Volume 679, Issue -, Pages 219-239Publisher
INTER-RESEARCH
DOI: 10.3354/meps13904
Keywords
Animal tracking; Telemetry; Satellite tracking; GPS; Movement ecology; Allometric scaling; Fisheries; Invasive species
Categories
Funding
- Ocean Track Network (OTN)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Canadian Research Chair Program
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Decapod crustaceans play important roles in ecosystems and economies, but are facing increasing threats from human activities and climate change. Telemetry has been a useful tool to study their spatial ecology. Synthesizing telemetry studies from 1971 to 2019 provided insights into decapods' behaviors and patterns across different habitats and regions. The positive relationship between body length and movement rate suggests the broad ecological insights that these studies can provide for managing fisheries and protecting sensitive species.
Decapod crustaceans are ecologically and economically important invertebrates but are vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Understanding their spatial ecology is essential for their management and conservation, with telemetry emerging as a useful tool to quantify space-use and movements. Here, we synthesized the use of telemetry to study decapods among articles published from 1971 to 2019 (n = 102 studies), by taxonomic group of the study species, study location, objectives, number of animals tagged and their tag recovery rate, types (and trends) of telemetry used, and IUCN conservation status. These studies revealed insight into the behaviours and roles of decapods across habitats and geographic regions. The most common study species were crayfish and lobsters (41%, Astacidea), and these studies also had the highest number of individuals tagged per study (mean = 149 individuals). Most studies (86 %) were conducted in the northern hemisphere. Acoustic tags were the most commonly used equipment (66% of studies) and were first employed in 1971, followed by radio-telemetry (mid-1990s), passive integrated transponders (mid-2000s), and data storage tags (late 2000s). Almost half (48 %) of studies focused on species that had a conservation status of Least Concern, perhaps reflecting an applied science focus on animals of commercial interest rather than conservation importance. The positive allometric relationship between body length and movement rate (exponent = 0.86) demonstrates the type of broader ecological insight that combining these studies can provide. Tracking decapod movements will likely become increasingly important for managing fisheries, protecting sensitive species, and understanding invasion biology.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available