Abstract Methods to evaluate receiver performance within acoustic telemetry arrays are needed to quantitatively determine which receivers are the most important to maintain. A recently developed approach, the Receiver Efficiency Index (REI), expresses the proportion of transmitter activity from throughout an array that occurs at each receiver location within it. The components of this composite index equally weight the proportion of detections, individual tags, and species from the entire array that were detected at a given receiver and then adjusts for the proportion of time that each receiver was deployed. In this study, we evaluated receivers in a long-term (8+ years) telemetry array deployed in Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary (GRNMS) located off the coast of Georgia (southeastern USA). Specifically, we explored the causes of fluctuations in the index over time, evaluated correlations between the REI and its component measures, and determined the sensitivity of the composite to individual components. Additionally, we examined the fish assemblages detected at each receiver over time using non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) to assess how REI scores vary across fish communities. Results indicate that receiver importance varied through time. Correlations between the REI and each of its components were all positive and significant, and the REI was robust to exclusion of any one component. Sites with similar fish assemblages had very different REI values in GRNMS, but not when we reexamined the data from an array in Florida that was used to develop the REI. These findings suggest that decisions regarding which species groups (e.g. resident versus transient), time periods (e.g. seasonal versus inter-annual), or even components of the REI (e.g. duration of deployment) to include during analysis can have strong effects on the interpretation of receiver importance. We also recommend that the REI be coupled with species assemblage analyses such as nMDS to better understand how fish assemblages differ at sites with similar REI scores.

中文翻译：

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测量和了解声学遥测阵列中的接收器效率

摘要 需要在声学遥测阵列内评估接收器性能的方法来定量确定哪些接收器最需要维护。最近开发的一种方法，即接收器效率指数 (REI)，表示整个阵列中每个接收器位置发生的发射器活动的比例。该综合指数的组成部分对在给定接收器处检测到的整个阵列中的检测、单个标签和物种的比例进行同等加权，然后根据部署每个接收器的时间比例进行调整。在这项研究中，我们评估了部署在位于乔治亚州（美国东南部）海岸附近的格雷礁国家海洋保护区 (GRNMS) 的长期（8 年以上）遥测阵列中的接收器。具体来说，我们探索了该指数随时间波动的原因，评估了 REI 与其组成部分之间的相关性，并确定了综合指数对各个组成部分的敏感性。此外，我们使用非度量多维标度 (nMDS) 检查了每个接收器随时间检测到的鱼类组合，以评估 REI 分数在鱼类群落中的差异。结果表明接收者的重要性随时间而变化。REI 与其每个组成部分之间的相关性都是积极且显着的，并且 REI 很稳健，可以排除任何一个组成部分。具有相似鱼类组合的站点在 GRNMS 中具有非常不同的 REI 值，但当我们重新检查佛罗里达州用于开发 REI 的阵列中的数据时，情况并非如此。这些发现表明，决定哪些物种组（例如 常驻与瞬态）、时间段（例如季节性与年际），甚至 REI 的组成部分（例如部署的持续时间）包括在分析中都可能对接收器重要性的解释产生很大影响。我们还建议将 REI 与诸如 nMDS 之类的物种组合分析相结合，以更好地了解鱼类组合在具有相似 REI 分数的地点有何不同。