Nature Communications (Oct 2017)

Pan-Antarctic analysis aggregating spatial estimates of Adélie penguin abundance reveals robust dynamics despite stochastic noise

  • Christian Che-Castaldo,
  • Stephanie Jenouvrier,
  • Casey Youngflesh,
  • Kevin T. Shoemaker,
  • Grant Humphries,
  • Philip McDowall,
  • Laura Landrum,
  • Marika M. Holland,
  • Yun Li,
  • Rubao Ji,
  • Heather J. Lynch

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00890-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Adélie penguins are a key Antarctic indicator species, but data patchiness has challenged efforts to link population dynamics to key drivers. Che-Castaldo et al. resolve this issue using a pan-Antarctic Bayesian model to infer missing data, and show that spatial aggregation leads to more robust inference regarding dynamics.