Mouvement, Abondance, Distribution

Sophie MONSARRAT

SMonsarrat

Ancienne membre de l'équipe DPB - cette page n'est plus maintenue

Postdoctoral researcher

IRD UMR MARBEC – CNRS CEFE UMR 5175

Campus du CNRS

1919, route de Mende
34293 Montpellier 5
tél : +33 4 67 61 32 69
fax: +33 4 67 61 33 36

Personnal website: http://sophiemonsarrat.weebly.com/

Postdoc project

Evaluating the level of depletion of cetaceans in relation to a pre-human impact baseline to inform their conservation.

 Supervisors : Ana Rodrigues and David Kaplan

 

PhD Project

Reconstruction of marine mammal’s historical distribution and abundance: setting a baseline to understand the past, inform the present and plan the future.

(as part of the MORSE project)

Supervisors: Ana Rodrigues and Francesco Bonadonna

 

ABSTRACT:

Relevant baselines on the historical distribution and abundance of species are needed to support appropriate conservation targets for depleted species, but the full scale of cumulative human impacts on ecosystems is highly underestimated. In this project, I investigated the challenges and opportunities of combining historical data with analytical methods to improve these historical baselines. Occurrence data from archaeological, historical and industrial sources were reviewed for seven cetacean and three pinniped species, revealing range contractions and population depletions from prehistorical times to today. For five whale species, I used species distribution modelling to combine 19th Century whaling records with environmental data, to estimate pre-whaling distributions. For the highly depleted North Atlantic right whale, (Eubalaena glacialis), I obtained a detailed estimate of pre-whaling distribution and abundance by inferring from the historical distribution and abundance of its congeneric North Pacific right whale (E. japonica). These results suggest that the North Atlantic right whale occupies a small fraction of its historical range and that its current population represents <5% of its historical abundance, with implications for the management, monitoring and conservation targets of this species. More generally, these results emphasize the utility of considering historical data to understand the extent to which species have been impacted by humans, assess their current level of depletion, and inform the options available for their future recovery.

 Keywords:

Abundance, Baseline, Eubalaena glacialis, Distribution, Marine mammals, North Atlantic right whale, Species distribution models

 

Research experience : 

2015     Postdoctoral researcher (6 months) with the Institute for Research and Development, Laboratory Marine Biodiversity, Exploitation and Conservation (Sète, France): Assessing the depletion level of marine mammals. Supervised by A. Rodrigues, D. Kaplan, in collaboration with the IUCN Species’ Survival Commission.

 

2012-2015 PhD research student (3 years), University of Montpellier and Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (Montpellier, France): Reconstruction of marine mammal’s historical distribution and abundance: setting a baseline to understand the past, inform the present and plan the future. Supervised by F. Bonadonna and A. Rodrigues.
 
 
2011      Research assistant (2 months), with the Ecology, Systematics and Evolution Lab (Orsay, France): Foraging habitat selection of griffon vultures Gyps fulvus in response to supplementary feeding management. Supervised by O.Duriez and C. Bessa-Gomes.
 
 
2011      M.Sc. research student(5 months), with the Center for functional and evolutionary ecology (Montpellier, France) and the French National Museum of Natural History (Paris, France): The impact of food predictability on the foraging behavior of griffon vultures. Research project as part of the 2nd year of M.Sc. Supervised by O. Duriez and F. Sarrazin.
 
 
2010      Internship (3 months), with the French National Museum of Natural History and the French national agency for wildlife (Paris, France): Time-budget analysis in the wintering Eurasian woodcock Scolopax rusticola. Research project as part of the 1st year of M.Sc. Supervised by O. Duriez and Y. Ferrand.
 
 
2010      Internship (2 months), with theFrench National Museum of Natural History (Paris, France): Detection of the population dynamic of chiropters in hiberculatum.  Research project as part of the 2nd year of Magistère. Supervised by C. Kerbiriou, J.F. Julien and A. Robert.
 
 
2009      Internship (3 months), with the Ecology, Systematics and Evolution Lab (Orsay, France): The impact of global warming on carbohydrates reserves in Quercus petraea and Pinus sylvestris in Fontainebleau forest.Research project as part of the 1st year of Magistère. Supervised by A. Michelot and C. Damesin.
 
 
2008      Internship (3 months), with the Pathology department, Cardiff University (Cardiff, Wales, UK): DNA reparation mechanisms and the structure of chromatin in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Research project as part of the 2nd year of B.Sc. Supervised by R. Waters.
 

 

Publications :

Monsarrat S., Smith T.D, Reeves R.R, Pennino M.G., Meynard C.M., Kaplan D.M., Rodrigues A.S.L. A spatially-explicit estimate of the pre-whaling abundance of the endangered North Atlantic right whale. (submitted)

Rodrigues A.S.L, Kolska Horwitz L., Monsarrat S., Charpentier A. Ancient whale exploitation in the Mediterranean: species matters. (submitted)

Monsarrat S., Smith T.D, Reeves R.R, Pennino M.G., Meynard C.M., Kaplan D.M., Rodrigues A.S.L (2015) Historical summer distribution of the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis): a hypothesis based on the environmental niche of a congeneric species. Diversity and Distributions: 21(8), 925-937.  doi: 10.1111/ddi.12314

Kerbiriou C., Julien J.F., Monsarrat S., Lustrat P. , Haquart A. & Robert A. (2015) Information on population trends and biological constraints from bat counts in roost cavities: a twenty two-year case study of an hibernaculum of Pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Schreber). Wildlife research: 42(1), 35-43. doi:10.1071/WR14197

Monsarrat S., Benhamou S., Sarrazin F., Bessa-Gomes C., Bouten W., Duriez O. -How predictability of feeding patches affects home range and foraging habitat selection in avian social scavengers?PLoS ONE (2013)

 
Monsarrat S.Duriez O., Sarrazin F., Lecuyer P.L'utilisation des sites d'alimentation par les vautours fauves dans les Causses.  Vautour info n°24 (2013)
 

Kerbiriou C., Marmet J., Monsarrat S., Robert A., Lemaire M., Arthur L., Haquart A., Julien JF. - 2012 - Eléments de réflexion sur le suivi des gîtes de chiroptères. Symbioses : 28, 55-58. (PDF)

 
 

Communications:

Monsarrat S., Pennino M.G., Smith T.D., Reeves R.R., Meynard C.N., Kaplan D.M.,  Rodrigues A.S.L. (2015) Modelling the pre-whaling distribution and abundance of the endangered North Atlantic whale from historical whaling records of a congeneric species. [Talk]. International Congress for Conservation Biology, ICCB-ECCB 2015 (Montpellier, France).

- Monsarrat S., Smith T.D, Reeves R.R, Pennino M.G., Meynard C., Kaplan D., Rodrigues A.S.L.(2014)Hypothetical historical summer distribution of the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis), based on the environmental niche of a congeneric species [Invited speaker]. Workshop: Marine Mammals as Indicators of Historical Changes, European Cetacean Society Conference (Liège, Belgium).

- Monsarrat S., Smith T., Reeves R., Pennino M.G., Meynard C., Kaplan D., Rodrigues A.S.L. (2013) Reconstructing the historical summer  grounds of the North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis). [poster]. 20th Biennial Conference for the Biology of Marine Mammals (Dunedin, New Zealand).

- Monsarrat S., Rodrigues A.S.L. (2013) Impact of past Human exploitation on the global pattern of marine mammals distribution. [oral presentation]. Student Conference on Conservation Science (Cambridge, UK)

- Monsarrat S., Rodrigues A.S.L. (2012) Impact of past Human exploitation on the global pattern of marine mammals distribution [oral presentation]. Oceans Past IV (Perth, Australia)

- Monsarrat S., Benhamou S., Sarrazin F., Bessa-Gomes C., Duriez O.(2012) Impact de la prévisibilité des ressources sur les caractéristiques des domaines vitaux et la sélection d’habitat chez le vautour fauve Gyps fulvus [oral presentation]. Réveil du dodo IV (Dijon, France)

- Monsarrat S., Duriez O. and Sarrazin F. (2011) Food predictability and prospection behaviour of Griffon vultures: first results from GPS telemetry [oral presentation]. 8th conference of the European Ornithologist Union (Riga, Latvia)

- Monsarrat S., Duriez O. (2011) Foraging behavior of griffon vultures in the Grands Causses area [oral presentation], Groupe Vautour France (Millau, France)

- Monsarrat S., Kerbiriou C. et Julien J.F. (2010) Détection de la dynamique de population dans des données de comptages hivernaux [oral presentation], Rencontres nationales de la chauve-souris (Bourges, France).