Abstract
Population monitoring must be based on reliable and optimized methods in order to develop relevant management or conservation measures, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of these measures. My general objective is to develop and validate a methodological framework for the optimized monitoring of small cetacean sedentary populations. My study showed that (1) it is possible to estimate the probability of reproduction and the probability of survival of calves taking into account the imperfect detection of the animals and the uncertainty about the reproductive status of the females (2) the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of field effort and the spatial distribution of individuals can be explicitly incorporated into models to correct estimates of survival probability and population size, and (3) the reduction in field effort particularly affects the precision of population size estimates but has little impact on the precision of adult survival probability.