title: Learning and robustness to catch-and-release fishing in a shark social network.
abstract: Individuals can play different roles in maintaining connectivity and social cohesion in animal populations and thereby influence population robustness to perturbations. We performed a social network analysis in a reef shark population to assess the vulnerability of the global network to node removal under different scenarios. We found that the network was generally robust to the removal of nodes with high centrality. The network appeared also highly robust to experimental fishing. Individual shark catchability decreased as a function of experience, as revealed by comparing capture frequency and site presence. Altogether, these features suggest that individuals learnt to avoid capture, which ultimately increased network robustness to experimental catch-and-release. Our results also suggest that some caution must be taken when using capture-recapture models often used to assess population size as assumptions (such as equal probabilities of capture and recapture) may be violated by individual learning to escape recapture.
authors.affiliation: PSL Research University: EPHE-UPVD-CNRS, USR 3278 CRIOBE, 66860 Perpignan, France johann.mourier@gmail.com.|Laboratoire d'excellence 'CORAIL', EPHE, PSL Research University, UPVD, CNRS, USR 3278 CRIOBE, Papetoai, Moorea, French Polynesia.|Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Johann
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9019-1717
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mourier
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Culum
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.affiliation: PSL Research University: EPHE-UPVD-CNRS, USR 3278 CRIOBE, 66860 Perpignan, France.|Laboratoire d'excellence 'CORAIL', EPHE, PSL Research University, UPVD, CNRS, USR 3278 CRIOBE, Papetoai, Moorea, French Polynesia.
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Planes
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D005260:Female; D005398:Fisheries; D008297:Male; D011114:Polynesia; D011156:Population Density; D012754:Sharks / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: blacktip reef shark; coral reefs; resilience; social network topology