| Summary: | The coast of Santa Catarina State is a breeding ground for southern right whales that regularly use this area at a triennial interval. Weather phenomena, such as El Niño, can affect this regularity. To test whether these trends are maintained, data collected at land base stations in 2020 and 2021 were compared with those from 2017 and 2018. Generalized linear models (GLM) were used to test the influence of the explanatory variables on the number of whales recorded: year, month, and land base station. ANOVA tests were performed to detect significant differences between years and a cluster analysis was conducted using the Morisita-Horn similarity index. All explanatory variables tested by the GLM were significant. Significant differences were detected by the ANOVA when all years were compared together. When comparing corresponding years, 2017-2020 did not exhibit significant differences, while 2018-2021 did. The similarity analysis clustered the years 2018-2021 but did not cluster 2017-2020; the year 2017 was the closest to the group 2018-2021. This probably occurred due to the distribution pattern of the coves and not the number of registered whales. The results partially support our hypotheses and suggest the distribution pattern of the species undergoes considerable interannual oscillations. O litoral sul de Santa Catarina é uma área reprodutiva da baleia-franca-austral, que usa regularmente a região em intervalos trianuais. Entretanto, fatores como fenômenos climáticos podem afetar essa regularidade. A fim de testar se estas flutuações se mantêm, os dados coletados no monitoramento terrestre dos anos de 2020 e 2021 foram comparados com os anos de 2017 e 2018. Foram elaborados inicialmente modelos lineares generalizados para identificar a influência das variáveis ano, mês de registro e ponto de monitoramento. Para avaliar diferenças entre os anos, foram realizadas análises de variância e posteriormente foi realizada uma análise de agrupamento utilizando o índice de similaridade de Morisita-Horn. Todas as ...
|
|---|