1. The Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus) is a key forage species for many commercially important fish (e.g. salmon and groundfish), marine birds, and whales found in nearshore coastal waters of British Columbia, Canada.
2. Sand lance lack a swim bladder and have a requirement for low-silt, medium-coarse sandy sea-bed habitat for burying. Little information is available describing the distribution of burying habitat, partly because there are no commercial fisheries for A. personatus in British Columbia.
3. This information is required by habitat and wildlife managers to identify and protect uncommon patches of burying habitats from detrimental activities, including dredging, infilling, and oil spills.
4. In this study, habitat distribution results from five suitability modelling algorithms were evaluated: maximum entropy, generalized linear model, generalized additive model, random forest, and an ensemble model of the latter three.
5. The maximum entropy model had the highest performance score (area under the receiver operator characteristic curve was 0.78) and was selected as the model that most accurately identified the presence of suitable A. personatus burying habitat.
6. Model results indicate that suitable burying habitat is primarily influenced by derived sea-bed substrate, distance to estuary, distance to sand-gravel beaches, and bottom sea temperature.
7. Overall, the spatial modelling identified only 105 km² of highly suitable sand lance burying habitat, or 2.6% of the study area (0–150 m), primarily in Haro Strait, along the east coast of Vancouver Island, and in northern regions of the strait near Cortes, Savary, and Harwood islands.
8. Identification of this uncommon and patchy burying habitat will contribute to the ongoing conservation of an important coastal prey species.

中文翻译：

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加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省乔治亚海峡草料鱼潮下掩埋栖息地的空间分布模型比较

1. 太平洋沙枪鱼（Ammodytes personatus）是在加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省近岸海域发现的许多具有重要商业价值的鱼类（例如鲑鱼和底层鱼）、海鸟和鲸鱼的主要饲料物种。
2. 沙枪没有鳔，需要低淤泥、中粗沙的海床栖息地进行掩埋。描述掩埋栖息地分布的信息很少，部分原因是不列颠哥伦比亚省没有针对A. personatus 的商业渔业。
3. 栖息地和野生动物管理者需要这些信息来识别和保护不常见的掩埋栖息地，使其免受有害活动的影响，包括疏浚、填充和石油泄漏。
4. 在本研究中，评估了五种适宜性建模算法的栖息地分布结果：最大熵、广义线性模型、广义加性模型、随机森林和后三者的集成模型。
5. 最大熵模型的性能得分最高（接受者操作特征曲线下的面积为 0.78），并被选为最准确地识别合适的拟人猿掩埋栖息地存在的模型。
6. 模型结果表明，适宜的埋藏生境主要受衍生的海床基质、到河口的距离、到沙砾滩的距离和海底温度的影响。
7. 总体而言，空间模型仅确定了 105 km ²高度适宜的沙枪掩埋栖息地，占研究区域（0-150 m）的 2.6%，主要位于哈罗海峡、温哥华岛东海岸和北部地区。靠近科尔特斯岛、萨瓦里岛和哈伍德岛的海峡。
8. 确定这种不常见且不完整的掩埋栖息地将有助于持续保护重要的沿海猎物物种。