Willy Dabin

La Rochelle Université

By-catch is the most direct threat to marine mammals globally. Acoustic repellent devices (pingers) have been developed to reduce dolphin by-catch. However, mixed results regarding their efficiency have been reported. Here, we present a new bio-inspired acoustic beacon, emitting returning echoes from the echolocation clicks of a common dolphin ‘Del...

Cetaceans have been naturally exposed to toxic trace elements (TEs) on an evolutionary time scale. Hence, they have developed mechanisms to control and/or mitigate their toxic effects. These long-lived species located at high trophic positions and bioaccumulating toxic elements are assumed to be good biomonitoring organisms. However, anthropogenic...

The proper management of cetacean populations requires life history and demographic parameters to be estimated at population level. In this study we focus on a reproductive pathology that has the potential to alter reproductive rate: the vaginal calculi or stones. The present work documents vaginal calculi prevalence and structure in the eastern No...

The first Unusual Mortality Event (UME) related to fishing activity along the Atlantic coast recorded by the French Stranding Network was in 1989: 697 small delphinids, mostly common dolphins, washed ashore, most of them with evidence of having been bycaught. Since then, UMEs of common dolphins have been observed nearly every year in the Bay of Bis...

Between the 1st of February and the March 31, 2017, 793 stranded cetaceans were found along the French Atlantic coasts. Common dolphins made up 84% of these strandings, and most of these presented evidence of death in fishing gear. The aim of this work is to test an approach that could help identify the fisheries potentially involved in a given str...

The incidence of marine traffic has risen in recent decades and is expected to continue rising as maritime traffic, vessel speed, and engine power all continue to increase. Although long considered anecdotal, ship strikes are now recognized as a major threat to cetaceans. However, estimation of ship strike rates is still challenging notably because...

Oscillations in the Earth's temperature and the subsequent retreating and advancing of ice-sheets around the polar regions are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution and genetic structuring of contemporary high-latitude populations. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), retreating of the ice-sheets would have enabled e...

Reconstruction of the demographic and evolutionary history of populations assuming a consensus tree‐like relationship can mask more complex scenarios, which are prevalent in nature. An emerging genomic toolset, which has been most comprehensively harnessed in the reconstruction of human evolutionary history, enables molecular ecologists to elucidat...

Effective conservation requires monitoring and pro‐active risk assessments. We studied the effects of at‐sea mortality events (ASMEs) in marine mammals over two decades (1990–2012) and built a risk‐based indicator for the European Union's Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Strandings of harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), short‐beaked common do...

Reconstruction of the demographic and evolutionary history of populations assuming a consensus tree-like relationship can mask more complex scenarios, which are prevalent in nature. An emerging genomic toolset, which has been most comprehensively harnessed in the reconstruction of human evolutionary history, enables molecular ecologists to elucidat...

Between the 8th January and the 25th February 2016, the largest sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus mortality event ever recorded in the North Sea occurred with 30 sperm whales stranding in five countries within six weeks. All sperm whales were immature males. Groups were stratified by size, with the smaller animals stranding in the Netherlands, and...

Potential drivers of the stranding events, with conclusions on the likelihood of causality for each factor. Colours reflect whether factors could be excluded (green), were unlikely (light green), or remain uncertain/could not be excluded (orange). In blue the most likely explanation for the stranding events, although the bathymetry of the region do...

Overview of ancillary diagnostic tests. Virological, bacteriological and parasitology results of cases investigated. NE = Not Examined. NF = Not Found. (XLSX)

Sperm whale strandings North Sea region. Overview of all stranded sperm whales along the North Sea coastline (n = 80) from 1997–2016. (XLSX)

Overview of pathological findings. NE = Not Examined. NAD = No Abnormalities Detected. NF = Not Found. (XLSX)

Sea surface temperature (SST) and sperm whale strandings. Averaged SST (green line) for the winters with high sperm whales stranding numbers in the North Sea region: 29th of November of the years 1994/95, 1995/96, 1996/97, 1997/98, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17. The dotted line represents the respective confidence interval and the red coloured...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans were used to analyse, respectively, the soft tissues and the bones of the heads of four common dolphins and three harbour porpoises. This imaging study was completed by an examination of anatomical sections performed on two odontocete heads (a subadult common dolphin and a subadult...

Grey (Halichoerus grypus) and harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) are sympatric seal species, but they display distinct strategies of habitat use and connectivity between haulout sites. The distribution patterns and variations in relative abundance of both species were investigated along the French coast of the English Channel, at the southern limit of...

The field of population genetics is rapidly moving into population genomics as the quantity of data generated by High-Throughput Sequencing platforms increases. In the present study we used Restriction-site Associated DNA-Sequencing (RADSeq) to recover genome-wide genotypes from 70 white-beaked (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) and 43 Atlantic white-sid...

The morphological study of the Odontocete organ of Corti together with possible alterations associated with damage from sound exposure, represent a key conservation approach to assess the effects of acoustic pollution on marine ecosystems. By collaborating with stranding networks from several European countries, 150 ears from 13 species of Odontoce...

Environmental conditions can shape genetic and morphological divergence. Release of new habitats during historical environmental changes was a major driver of evolutionary diversification. Here, forces shaping population structure and ecotype differentiation (‘pelagic’ and ‘coastal’) of bottlenose dolphins in the North-east Atlantic were investigat...

Marine vertebrate strandings offer an opportunistic sampling scheme that can provide abundant data over long periods. Because the stranding process involves biological, physical and sociological parameters, confounding complicates the interpretation of results. The statistical analysis of these data relies on generalized linear or additive models i...

Ecological indicators for monitoring strategies are expected to combine three major characteristics: ecological significance, statistical credibility and cost-effectiveness. Strategies based on stranding networks rank highly in cost-effectiveness, but their ecological significance and statistical credibility are disputed. Our present goal is to imp...

Despite no obvious barrier to gene flow, historical environmental processes and ecological specializations can lead to genetic differentiation in highly mobile animals. Ecotypes emerged in several large mammal species as a result of niche specializations and/or social organization. In the North-West Atlantic, two distinct bottlenose dolphin (Tursio...

Restriction site-Associated DNA tag (RAD-tag) sequencing has become a popular approach to generate thousands of SNPs used to address diverse questions in population genomics. Comparatively, the suitability of RAD-tag genotyping to address evolutionary questions across divergent species has been the subject of only a few recent studies. Here, we eva...

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