Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia.
Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center Washington State University, Wenatchee, Washington, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 4;17(8):e0272359. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272359. eCollection 2022.
Understanding the links between species and their environment is critical for species management. This is particularly true for organisms of medical and/or economic significance. The 'Irukandji' jellyfish (Carukia barnesi) is well known for its small size, cryptic nature, and highly venomous sting. Being the namesake of the Irukandji syndrome, contact with this marine stinger often leads to hospitalization and can be fatal. Consequently, the annual occurrence of this organism is believed to cost the Australian government an estimated $AUD3 billion annually in medical costs and losses for tourism. Despite its economic importance the logistical difficulties related to surveying C.barnesi in situ has led to a paucity of knowledge regarding its ecology and significantly impeded management strategies to date. In this study, we use six years of direct C. barnesi capture data to explore patterns pertaining to the annual occurrence and abundance of this species in the nearshore waters of the Cairns coast. We provide novel insights into trends in medusae aggregations and size distribution and primarily focus on the potential role of environmental drivers for annual C. barnesi occurrence patterns. Using a two-part hurdle model, eight environmental parameters were investigated over four time periods for associations with records of medusa presence and abundance. Final models showed a small amount of variation in medusa presence and abundance patterns could be accounted for by long-term trends pertaining to rainfall and wind direction. However, the assessed environmental parameters could not explain high annual variation or site location effects. Ultimately best-fit models had very low statistical inference power explaining between 16 and 20% of the variance in the data, leaving approximately 80% of all variation in medusa presence and abundance unexplained.
了解物种与其环境之间的联系对于物种管理至关重要。对于具有医学和/或经济意义的生物来说尤其如此。伊鲁坎吉水母（Carukia barnesi）以其体型小、隐蔽性强和剧毒刺蜇而闻名。它是伊鲁坎吉综合征的同名物种，与这种海洋刺蜇接触通常会导致住院治疗，甚至可能致命。因此，据估计，这种生物每年在澳大利亚造成的医疗费用和旅游业损失约为 30 亿澳元。尽管具有经济重要性，但由于在原地调查 C.barnesi 的后勤困难，导致人们对其生态学的了解甚少，并严重阻碍了迄今为止的管理策略。在这项研究中，我们使用六年的直接 C. barnesi 捕获数据来探讨该物种在凯恩斯海岸近岸水域的年度发生和丰度模式。我们提供了有关水母群集和大小分布趋势的新见解，主要关注环境驱动因素对年度 C. barnesi 发生模式的潜在作用。使用两部分障碍模型，在四个时间段内调查了八个环境参数与水母存在和丰度记录之间的关联。最终模型表明，水母存在和丰度模式的少量变化可以通过与降雨量和风向有关的长期趋势来解释。然而，评估的环境参数无法解释年度变化或站点位置的影响。最终，最佳拟合模型的统计推断能力非常低，仅能解释数据中 16%至 20%的方差，而水母存在和丰度的所有变化中仍有 80%左右无法解释。
