Comparison of kinship-identification methods for robust stock assessment
using close-kin mark--recapture data for Pacific bluefin tuna
Abstract
There have been many attempts to understand population dynamics in
fishery resources such as tuna species using an integrated-analysis
model with multiple data sources. However, estimating the absolute
abundance level in practical stock assessments remains challenging. The
close-kin mark–recapture (CKMR) method provides information about the
number of adults in a population utilizing close-kinship pairs (i.e.,
parent–offspring, full-sibling, or half-sibling pairs) identified based
on statistical methods that employ genetic markers. To introduce the
CKMR method into the stock assessment by integrated analysis, it is
necessary to clarify the potential errors obtained from the
uncertainties in the CKMR method and other data sources. In this paper,
we applied three methods of kinship identification for samples from the
wild Pacific bluefin tuna population using genome-wide DNA markers to
determine the potential errors in statistical kinship estimates. Herein,
one method used a random-forest classification algorithm called fraRF
that employed pairwise identity-by-descent values. The other two methods
were CKMRsim and COLONY. Comparisons among these three methods revealed
differences in the numbers of inferred kinship pairs, especially for
sibling relationships. The differences among the three methods seem to
occur mainly from uncertainty of the kinship identification in the CKMR
method. Therefore, this result provides an understanding of ways to
incorporate the CKMR method into the integrated analysis model with the
possible CKMR errors.