The potential of integrated modelling in conservation biology:: a case study of the black-footed albatross (Phoebastria nigripes)

Conservation biology aims at assessing the status of a population, based on information which is often incomplete. Integrated population modelling based on state-space models appears to be a powerful and relevant way of combining into a single likelihood several types of information such as capture-recapture data and population surveys. In this paper, the authors describe the principles of integrated population modelling and they evaluate its performance for conservation biology based on a case study, that of the black-footed albatross, a northern Pacific albatross species suspected to be impacted by longline fishing.