Bottlenose dolphins (
This content will become publicly available on August 13, 2025
Assessing trends in population abundance and demographics is crucial for managing long‐lived and slow‐reproducing species. Obtaining demographic data, and age‐structure information, is challenging, notably for cetaceans. To address this, we combined Unoccupied Aerial System (UAS; drone) photogrammetry data with long‐term (>20 years) photo identification data to assess the age‐structure of the critically endangered sub‐population of common bottlenose dolphins (
- Award ID(s):
- 2106909
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10532891
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Animal Conservation
- ISSN:
- 1367-9430
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Results We find that coastal bottlenose dolphin distributions are associated with one family of fishes, the Sciaenidae, or drum family, and predictions slightly improve when using only fish versus only environmental variables. The literature review suggests that this tight coupling is likely a predator–prey relationship. Comparatively, offshore dolphin distributions are more strongly related to environmental variables, and predictions are better for environmental‐only models. As revealed by the literature review, this may be due to a mismatch between the animals caught in the fish and invertebrate surveys and the predominant prey of offshore dolphins, notably squid.
Main Conclusions Incorporating prey species into distribution models, especially for coastal bottlenose dolphins, can help inform ecological relationships and predict marine predator distributions.
