Reliance of mobile species on sensitive habitats: a case study of manta rays (Manta alfredi) and lagoons

Mar Biol (2014) 161:19871998 DOI 10.1007/s00227-014-2478-7

ORIGINAL PAPER

Reliance of mobile species on sensitive habitats: a case study of manta rays (Manta alfredi) and lagoons

Douglas J. McCauley Paul A. DeSalles Hillary S. Young Yannis P. Papastamatiou Jennifer E. Caselle Mark H. Deakos Jonathan P. A. Gardner David W. Garton John D. Collen Fiorenza Micheli

Abstract Quantifying the ecological importance of individual habitats to highly mobile animals is challenging because patterns of habitat reliance for these taxa are complex and difcult to observe. We investigated the importance of lagoons to the manta ray, Manta alfredi, a wide-ranging and vulnerable species in a less-disturbed atoll ecosystem. Lagoons are highly sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and are known to be ecologically important to a wide variety of mobile species. We used a novel combination of research tools to examine the reliance of M. alfredi on lagoon habitats. Stable isotope analysis was

Communicated by C. Harrod.

Douglas J. McCauley and Paul A. DeSalles have contributed equally to this work.

Douglas J. McCauley was formerly in Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacic Grove, CA 93950, USA.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00227-014-2478-7

Web End =10.1007/s00227-014-2478-7 ) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

D. J. McCauley (*) H. S. Young

Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA e-mail: [email protected]

P. A. DeSalles F. Micheli

Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University, Pacic Grove, CA 93950, USA

Y. P. Papastamatiou

School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK

J. E. Caselle

Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA

M. H. Deakos

Hawaii Association for Marine Education and Research, Inc., PMB#175 5095 Napilihau St. 109B, Lahaina, HI 96761, USA

J. P. A. Gardner J. D. Collen

Centre for Marine Environmental and Economic Research, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6012, New Zealand

D. W. Garton

School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

Received: 10 December 2013 / Accepted: 14 June 2014 / Published online: 26 June 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

used to assay the recent energetic importance of lagoons to M. alfredi; high-resolution tracking data provided information about how M. alfredi utilised lagoonal habitats over long and...