Seasonality, long-term trends and co-occurrence of sharks in a top predator assemblage

Abstract

Shark predator assemblages play an important role in the top-down processes that are vital to marine ecosystem functioning. Spatiotemporal partitioning of sharks due to seasonal movements or population changes may have significant consequences for the top-down effects, depending on the level of functional redundancy in the assemblage. However, long-term, co-occurrence data for sharks is hard to obtain and often lacking. Here we use citizen science data collected by professional scuba guides over seven years to model the seasonal and across-year temporal dynamics, and intraguild and trophic co-occurrence interactions, for an assemblage of six shark top predators (Carcharhinus leucas, Carcharhinus obscurus, Carcharhinus limbatus, Carcharias taurus, Sphyrna lewini, and Galeocerdo cuvier). The presence of all six study species were clearly seasonal and, in most cases, exhibited positive long-term trends across years. The seasonalities observed, combined with temporal co-occurrence analysis, suggests that dietary redundancy but temporal complementarity exists amongst the top predator assemblage. The study shows citizen science data collected by professional non-scientists is a cost-effective method for monitoring top predators and may be able to highlight potential predator-prey interactions worthy of further investigation.