Analysis reveals limited reliability of dolphin hotspot indicators for managing ecological conditions in estuaries.
Key Points
This research evaluates whether hotspot intensity of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins can effectively indicate critical ecological conditions in estuaries.
Utilized dolphin sightings from 2013 to 2016 and trawl-based fish surveys
Applied kernel density estimation (KDE) at multi-year and within-season temporal scales
Conducted area-based comparisons for various fish metrics
Assessed indicator performance using ROC-AUC for multiple operational targets
Multi-year KDE50 correlated poorly with reserve boundaries and was less effective for ecological differentiation
Environmental gradients explained more variance in fish metrics than dolphin space-use areas
ROC-AUC analysis indicated weak performance patterns that varied by target and spatial scale