Table 3. Drivers of elasmobranch depth preferences.

Mean of the posterior coefficient estimates and the quantiles of the posterior distribution (0.025 and 0.975) from the best Bayesian regression model examining the median depths of tagged elasmobranchs from 38 species within the first 7 days of tracking (excluding the first day of deployment) using INLA. Trophic level, maximum size, and primary habitat for each species were determined from existing literature (table S1). The maturity status for each individual was determined from length measurements taken when the animal was tagged and compared to published lengths at maturity (table S1). SST at the tagging location obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Multi-Scale Ultra-High Resolution level 4 analysis on a 0.01° spatial resolution and averaged across the 7 days following deployment. Spatial terms are derived from the latitude and longitude of the tagging location, and the realm is the biogeographic realm (26) where the tagging occurred. Terms for which the 95% credible interval of the posterior does not overlap zero are italicized. Asterisk denotes the interaction term.

Variable	Mean	0.025 quantile	0.975 quantile
Intercept	1.91	0.29	3.42
Habitat: coastal	-0.21	−0.38	−0.04
Habitat: coastal transient	0.16	0.00	0.32
Habitat: oceanic	0.05	−0.13	0.22
Maturity: immature	−0.02	−0.08	0.04
Maturity: mature	0.03	−0.03	0.09
Maturity: unknown	0.00	−0.10	0.09
Max size	−0.17	−0.32	−0.03
Sex: F	−0.04	−0.12	0.05
Sex: M	0.02	−0.06	0.11
Sex: U	0.01	−0.12	0.15
SST	0.00	−0.01	0.01
Trophic level	0.00	−0.34	0.38
Range for space	18.80	8.20	37.30
Stdev for space	0.17	0.11	0.24
Precision for species	0.02	0.20	0.01
Precision for species*realm	0.14	0.27	0.09
Precision for sex*species	0.10	0.20	0.06
Precision for species*SST	0.01	0.02	0.01