Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lloyd-Jones, Luke R
• Bravington, Mark V
• Armstrong, Kyle N
• Lawrence, Emma
• Feutry, Pierre
• Todd, Christopher M
• Dorrestein, Annabel
• Welbergen, Justin A
• Martin, John M
• Rose, Karrie
• Hall, Jane
• Phalen, David N
• Peters, Isabel
• Baylis, Shane M
• Macgregor, Nicholas A
• Westcott, David A

Titel

Close-kin mark-recapture informs critically endangered terrestrial mammal status

Ist Teil von

• Scientific reports, 2023-08, Vol.13 (1), p.12512-12512, Article 12512

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Reliable information on population size is fundamental to the management of threatened species. For wild species, mark-recapture methods are a cornerstone of abundance estimation. Here, we show the first application of the close-kin mark-recapture (CKMR) method to a terrestrial species of high conservation value; the Christmas Island flying-fox (CIFF). The CIFF is the island's last remaining native terrestrial mammal and was recently listed as critically endangered. CKMR is a powerful tool for estimating the demographic parameters central to CIFF management and circumvents the complications arising from the species' cryptic nature, mobility, and difficult-to-survey habitat. To this end, we used genetic data from 450 CIFFs captured between 2015 and 2019 to detect kin pairs. We implemented a novel CKMR model that estimates sex-specific abundance, trend, and mortality and accommodates observations from the kin-pair distribution of male reproductive skew and mate persistence. CKMR estimated CIFF total adult female abundance to be approximately 2050 individuals (95% CI (950, 4300)). We showed that on average only 23% of the adult male population contributed to annual reproduction and strong evidence for between-year mate fidelity, an observation not previously quantified for a Pteropus species in the wild. Critically, our population estimates provide the most robust understanding of the status of this critically endangered population, informing immediate and future conservation initiatives.