FN Archimer Export Format PT J TI Effects of Stochasticity in Early Life History on Steepness and Population Growth Rate Estimates: An Illustration on Atlantic Bluefin Tuna BT AF SIMON, Maximilien FROMENTIN, Jean-Marc BONHOMMEAU, Sylvain GAERTNER, Daniel BRODZIAK, Jon ETIENNE, Marie-Pierre AS 1:1,2;2:2;3:2;4:3;5:4;6:5; FF 1:;2:PDG-RBE-HM-RHSETE;3:PDG-RBE-HM-RHSETE;4:;5:;6:; C1 AgroParistech ENGREF, Ecole Natl Genie Rural Eaux & Forets, Paris, France. IFREMER Inst Francais Rech Exploitat Mer, UMR EME Exploited Marine Ecosyst 212, Sete, France. IRD Inst Rech Dev, UMR EME Exploited Marine Ecosyst 212, Sete, France. Pacific Islands Fisheries Sci Ctr, Honolulu, HI USA. Inst Natl Rech Agron, UMR AgroParistech INRA 518, Paris, France. C2 AGROPARISTECH ENGREF, FRANCE IFREMER, FRANCE IRD, FRANCE PACIFIC ISLANDS FISHERIES SCI CTR, USA INRA, FRANCE SI SETE SE PDG-RBE-HM-RHSETE IRD IN WOS Ifremer jusqu'en 2018 copubli-france copubli-p187 copubli-int-hors-europe IF 3.73 TC 13 UR https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00115/22640/20362.pdf LA English DT Article AB The intrinsic population growth rate (r) of the surplus production function used in the biomass dynamic model and the steepness (h) of the stock-recruitment relationship used in age-structured population dynamics models are two key parameters in fish stock assessment. There is generally insufficient information in the data to estimate these parameters that thus have to be constrained. We developed methods to directly estimate the probability distributions of r and h for the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus, Scombridae), using all available biological and ecological information. We examined the existing literature to define appropriate probability distributions of key life history parameters associated with intrinsic growth rate and steepness, paying particular attention to the natural mortality for early life history stages. The estimated probability distribution of the population intrinsic growth rate was weakly informative, with an estimated mean r = 0.77 (+/-0.53) and an interquartile range of (0.34, 1.12). The estimated distribution of h was more informative, but also strongly asymmetric with an estimated mean h = 0.89 (+/-0.20) and a median of 0.99. We note that these two key demographic parameters strongly depend on the distribution of early life history mortality rate (M-0), which is known to exhibit high year-to-year variations. This variability results in a widely spread distribution of M-0 that affects the distribution of the intrinsic population growth rate and further makes the spawning stock biomass an inadequate proxy to predict recruitment levels. PY 2012 PD OCT SO Plos One SN 1932-6203 PU Public Library Science VL 7 IS 10 UT 000310600500174 DI 10.1371/journal.pone.0048583 ID 22640 ER EF