http://hdl.handle.net/11606/1 Publicaciones científicas sobre investigaciones hechas en el Área de Conservación Guanacaste Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:40:29 GMT 2026-06-03T10:40:29Z http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2494 Improving the statistical reporting of hatching success data: the case of sea turtles Santidrián Tomillo, Pilar; Martínez-Abraín, Alejandro; Valverde, Verónica; Spotila, James R.; Paladino, Frank V. Estimating hatching success of egg clutches is essential for quantifying reproductive success in sea turtles. Thus, proper reporting is necessary to provide meaningful information for knowledge acquisition and management. Here we review how hatching success has been reported in the scientific literature and use our own multi-annual multi-species datasets to explore the best ways for describing hatching success data. Despite non normality, the central tendency of hatching success data was most often described using arithmetic means. Only 17 out of 203 (8%) studies reported the median, compared to 192 (95%) that reported the mean (6 studies reported both). In 24% of studies, a dispersion metric was not provided. In our comparison, the arithmetic mean was only a good predictor of central tendency in leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea), with the median (0.45) being only slightly above the mean (0.43). In leatherbacks, hatching success was characterized by high variability, and not by a consistently low hatching success, as indicated by the low skewness and large spread of data. On the contrary, hatching success data were strongly skewed and skewed toward high values in green turtles (Chelonia mydas) (25% and 75% percentiles: 0.88 and 0.98) and olive ridley turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) (25% and 75% percentiles: 0.75 and 0.97) respectively, with presence of outliers in both cases. Basic statistics, appropriate for characterizing non-normal distributions such as the median, skewness or kurtosis, together with boxplots, provided accurate description of hatching success data. Using these straightforward statistics would greatly improve the ecological understanding of hatching success in sea turtles. Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2494 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2493 Zero‐shot shark tracking and biometrics from aerial imagery Lalgudi, Chinmay K.; Leone, Mark E.; Clark, Jaden V.; Madrigal‐Mora, Sergio; Espinoza, Mario he recent widespread adoption of drones for studying marine animals provides opportunities for deriving biological information from aerial imagery. The large scale of imagery data acquired from drones is well suited for machine learning (ML) analysis. Development of ML models for analysing marine animal aerial im- agery has followed the classical paradigm of training, testing and deploying a new model for each dataset, requiring significant time, human effort and ML expertise. 2. We introduce Frame-­ Level Alignment and Tracking (FLAIR), which leverages the video understanding of Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM 2) and the vision-language capabilities of Contrastive Language-­ Image Pre-­ training (CLIP). FLAIR takes a drone video as input and outputs segmentation masks of the species of interest across the video. Notably, FLAIR leverages a zero-­ shot approach, elimi- nating the need for labelled data, training a new model or fine-­ tuning an existing model to generalize to other species. 3. We trained state-­ of-­ the-­ art object detection and instance segmentation models on a new dataset of Pacific nurse sharks. We show that FLAIR massively outper- forms these methods and performs competitively against two human-­ in-­ the-­ loop approaches for prompting SAM 2, achieving a Dice score of 0.8. FLAIR readily generalizes to other shark species without additional human effort and can be combined with custom heuristics to automatically extract relevant information including length and tailbeat frequency. 4. FLAIR has significant potential to accelerate aerial imagery analyses, requir- ing markedly less human effort and expertise than traditional machine learning workflows, while achieving superior accuracy and generalization performance. By reducing the effort required for aerial imagery analysis, FLAIR allows scien- tists to spend more time interpreting results and deriving insights about marine ecosystems. Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2493 2025-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2492 Mass stranding of Pelagic Seasnakes, <i>Hydrophis platurus</i> (Squamata: Hydrophiidae),in Guanacaste, Costa Rica Solórzano, Alejandro; Sasa, Mahmood Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2492 2025-01-22T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2491 Coral reefs restoration initiatives in Costa Rica: ten years building hope Alvarado, Juan José; Evans, Katharine; Kleypas, Joan A.; Marín-Moraga, José Andrés; Mendez-Venegas, Mauricio; Pérez-Reyes, Carlos; Sandoval, Marylaura; Solano, María José; Villalobos-Cubero, Tatiana Introduction: Costa Rica has been recognized worldwide for its high biodiversity and the conservation actions it has implemented. One of the most iconic ecosystems are coral reefs, which have experienced strong anthropo- genic and natural pressures in recent years. To ensure these ecosystems’ preservation and services, a series of coral restoration initiatives have emerged in the last ten years along both Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Objective: To document the different advances of the various coral restoration initiatives Costa Rica’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Methods: This review focuses on the implementation of the different reef restoration efforts, indicating the restoration techniques used, the coral species used in the nurseries, as well as the general results of survival and growth. Results: The first coral restoration project in Costa Rica occurred in the 1990s and was the only such effort until the 2010s. In 2013, a pilot project began in the Golfo Dulce area, which was later replicated in other areas of the country, such as Manuel Antonio, Sámara, and Bahía Culebra on the Pacific coast, and more recently in Punta Cahuita in the Caribbean. Various artificial structures have been used as nurseries in the water column such as trees and ropes, and benthic structures such like A-frames, tables, and spiders, the former being very effective for branching species (Pocillopora spp.), while the rest have worked successfully both for branched and massive species (Pavona spp. and Porites spp.). The results shows a growth rates have been between 6 and 9 cm/year, with survival of 60–90 % of the branching and massive colonies. All sites were seriously affected by the El Niño 2023 phenomenon, with high bleaching values and loss of colonies in the nurseries and on the reef. Conclusion: Despite geographic and oceanographic distinctions, these projects have emphasized local engage- ment and perception of coral reefs, fostered intersectoral public-private collaborations for financial and human resources, and operated within established governmental regulatory frameworks. All projects face vulnerabilities such as El Niño events and Harmful Algal Blooms. Mon, 03 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/11606/2491 2025-03-03T00:00:00Z