Systematic review of geographic biases in the collection of at-sea distribution data for seabirds

The distribution of wildlife informs conservation planning. In marine systems, spatial information for seabirds is acquired primarily using vessel-based at-sea survey, aerial survey or animal-borne tracking devices. Many factors contribute to geographic biases in marine spatial research and we use a structured database search to review global patterns resulting from these biases. Although survey effort has been substantial, many large marine sectors were poorly represented. Poor representation often coincided spatially with hotspots of seabird species richness or areas experiencing high cumulative human impact, particularly in southern hemisphere and equatorial regions. Therefore, future seabird research priorities should reflect high species-richness areas including the south-west Pacific, particularly waters surrounding New Zealand. Furthermore, under-represented areas of Asia, and the Atlantic coasts of South America and Africa require greater research effort because of high cumulative human impacts in these areas. National gross domestic product (GDP) was positively related to the number of papers a country produced (determined by the first author’s address). This is indicative of constraints imposed by inherent costs of marine research. We recommend international collaboration between scientists from high-GDP nations with those in developing countries to address this. Further uptake of platforms of opportunity may also reduce this imbalance.

野生动物的分布特征可为保护规划提供科学决策依据。在海洋生态系统中，海鸟的空间分布信息主要通过船载海上调查、航空调查或动物搭载追踪设备获取。海洋空间研究中存在诸多引发地理偏倚的影响因素，本研究通过结构化数据库检索，梳理了此类偏倚所催生的全球研究格局。尽管相关调查工作量已较为可观，但仍有大量大型海洋区域的研究覆盖不足。这类覆盖不足的区域，在空间上往往与海鸟物种丰富度热点区域，或累积人类影响程度较高的区域高度重合，南半球与赤道区域尤为突出。因此，未来海鸟研究的优先方向应聚焦于物种丰富度较高的海域，包括西南太平洋区域——尤其是新西兰周边水域。此外，鉴于亚洲部分研究覆盖不足的区域、南美洲与非洲大西洋沿岸海域的累积人类影响程度较高，这些区域也亟需加大研究投入。国家国内生产总值（GDP）与该国发表的相关论文数量呈正相关（以第一作者所属国家统计），这反映出海洋研究固有成本所带来的研究资源约束。为此，我们建议高GDP国家与发展中国家的科研人员开展国际合作，以破解这一研究失衡困境。进一步推广机会型观测平台的应用，也有助于缓解此类研究不平衡问题。