Coupling state-of-the-art modelling tools for better informed Red List assessments of marine fishes Journal of Applied Ecology

In the face of biodiversity loss worldwide, it is paramount to quantify species' extinction risk to guide conservation efforts. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s Red List is considered the global standard for evaluating extinction risks. IUCN criteria also inform national extinction risk assessments. Bayesian models, including the state-of-the-art JARA (‘Just Another Red List Assessment’) tool, deliver probabilistic statements about species falling into extinction risk categories, thereby enabling characterisation and communication of uncertainty in extinction risk assessments. We coupled the state-of-the-art VAST (‘Vector Autoregressive Spatio-Temporal’) modelling tool and JARA, for better informed Red List assessments of marine fishes. In this framework, VAST is fitted to scientific survey catch rate data to provide indices to JARA whose uncertainty is propagated to JARA outcomes suggesting extinction risk categories (under the population reduction criterion). In addition, VAST delivers a valuable habitat assessment to better understand what may be driving extinction risk in the study region. Here, we demonstrate the coupled VAST-JARA modelling framework by applying it to five contrasting North Sea species, with or without a quantitative stock assessment and with different conservation statuses according to the latest global Red List assessments.