Daniel Dunn

Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean

The distributions of migratory species in the ocean span local, national and international jurisdictions. Across these ecologically interconnected regions, migratory marine species interact with anthropogenic stressors throughout their lives. Migratory connectivity, the geographical linking of individuals and populations throughout their migratory cycles, influences how spatial and temporal dynamics of stressors affect migratory animals and scale up to influence population abundance, distribution and species persistence. Population declines of many migratory marine species have led to calls for connectivity knowledge, especially insights from animal tracking studies, to be more effectively incorporated into management and policy frameworks. However, while the quantity of data on marine migratory species has increased dramatically in recent decades, efforts to synthesize and integrate information on animal movement and connectivity into global management and policy fora are nascent with examples largely originating from individual efforts.

Launched in April 2019 at the UN, the Migratory Connectivity in the Ocean system (MiCO system; https://mico.eco/system) represents a step-change: a move from aggregating raw data that require precious human resources to re-analyze, to aggregating and developing fit-for-purpose, actionable knowledge. MiCO has been conducting a massive literature review of over 1200 publications describing how marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles and fish use and connect our oceans. That review has now generated a dataset on migratory connectivity for more than 85 marine species. The integrated network models which are being derived from this datset can feed countless analyses of cumulative impacts, extinction risk, governance fit, biodiversity hotspots based on empirical data of areas of importance to species rather than models of distribution, and regional and global systematic conservation planning among many, many other options.

The Applied Marine Bioegeography Lab at UQ seeks HDR students to engage with this datset and expand it to integrate other sampling methods that can inform network models for migriatory species (e.g., mark/recapture, stable isotopes, genetics and acoustics). A strong interest in either movement modeling or network modeling is desirable, as is some background in statistics, R and marine ecology. With a global dataset that spans taxa, output from this research should be emminently publishable in high level journals. Opportunities to collaborate with field ecologists, numerical ecologists, conservation scientists, and experts in regional and global governance are plentiful, as are chances to engage directly with regional and global ocean governance bodies including the Convention on Migratory Species, the Convention on Biological Diversity, Regional Seas Organizations, and the UN negotiations (and eventual implementation) of a new treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Dr. Dunn, AMBL and MiCO are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in this project and the lab. Applicants of any background, age, ability or gender are strongly encouraged to apply. Feel free to reach out for more information and check out the mico.eco & AMBL websites.