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      Size matters: Predator outbreaks threaten foundation species in small Marine Protected Areas

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      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          The unanticipated impacts of consumers in fragmented habitats are frequently a challenge for ecosystem management. On Indo-Pacific coral reefs, crown-of-thorns sea stars ( Acanthaster spp.) are coral predators whose outbreaks cause precipitous coral decline. Across large spatial scales, Acanthaster densities are lower in large no-take Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and reefs subject to limited human exploitation. However, using a combination of observational and manipulative experiments, we found that Acanthaster densities within a network of small, no-take MPAs on reef flats in Fiji were ~2–3.4 times greater inside MPAs than in adjacent fished areas and ~2–2.5 times greater than the upper threshold density indicative of an outbreak. This appeared to result from selective Acanthaster migration to the coral-rich MPAs from fished areas that are coral-poor and dominated by macroalgae. Small MPAs can dramatically increase the cover of foundation species like corals, but may selectively attract coral predators like Acanthaster due to greater food densities within MPAs or because the MPAs are too small to support Acanthaster enemies. As coral cover increases, their chemical and visual cues may concentrate Acanthaster to outbreak densities that cause coral demise, compromising the value of small MPAs. An understanding of predator dynamics as a function of habitat type, size, and fragmentation needs to be incorporated into MPA design and management.

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          Most cited references14

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          Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience.

          Phase-shifts from one persistent assemblage of species to another have become increasingly commonplace on coral reefs and in many other ecosystems due to escalating human impacts. Coral reef science, monitoring and global assessments have focused mainly on producing detailed descriptions of reef decline, and continue to pay insufficient attention to the underlying processes causing degradation. A more productive way forward is to harness new theoretical insights and empirical information on why some reefs degrade and others do not. Learning how to avoid undesirable phase-shifts, and how to reverse them when they occur, requires an urgent reform of scientific approaches, policies, governance structures and coral reef management. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            Designing marine reserve networks for both conservation and fisheries management.

            Marine protected areas (MPAs) that exclude fishing have been shown repeatedly to enhance the abundance, size, and diversity of species. These benefits, however, mean little to most marine species, because individual protected areas typically are small. To meet the larger-scale conservation challenges facing ocean ecosystems, several nations are expanding the benefits of individual protected areas by building networks of protected areas. Doing so successfully requires a detailed understanding of the ecological and physical characteristics of ocean ecosystems and the responses of humans to spatial closures. There has been enormous scientific interest in these topics, and frameworks for the design of MPA networks for meeting conservation and fishery management goals are emerging. Persistent in the literature is the perception of an inherent tradeoff between achieving conservation and fishery goals. Through a synthetic analysis across these conservation and bioeconomic studies, we construct guidelines for MPA network design that reduce or eliminate this tradeoff. We present size, spacing, location, and configuration guidelines for designing networks that simultaneously can enhance biological conservation and reduce fishery costs or even increase fishery yields and profits. Indeed, in some settings, a well-designed MPA network is critical to the optimal harvest strategy. When reserves benefit fisheries, the optimal area in reserves is moderately large (mode ≈30%). Assessing network design principals is limited currently by the absence of empirical data from large-scale networks. Emerging networks will soon rectify this constraint.
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              Marine reserves: size and age do matter.

              Marine reserves are widely used throughout the world to prevent overfishing and conserve biodiversity, but uncertainties remain about their optimal design. The effects of marine reserves are heterogeneous. Despite theoretical findings, empirical studies have previously found no effect of size on the effectiveness of marine reserves in protecting commercial fish stocks. Using 58 datasets from 19 European marine reserves, we show that reserve size and age do matter: Increasing the size of the no-take zone increases the density of commercial fishes within the reserve compared with outside; whereas the size of the buffer zone has the opposite effect. Moreover, positive effects of marine reserve on commercial fish species and species richness are linked to the time elapsed since the establishment of the protection scheme. The reserve size-dependency of the response to protection has strong implications for the spatial management of coastal areas because marine reserves are used for spatial zoning.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                6 February 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 2
                : e0171569
                Affiliations
                [001]School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, United States of America
                Department of Agriculture and Water Resources, AUSTRALIA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                • Conceptualization: CSC MEH.

                • Data curation: CSC.

                • Formal analysis: CSC.

                • Funding acquisition: MEH.

                • Investigation: CSC.

                • Methodology: CSC MEH.

                • Project administration: CSC MEH.

                • Resources: CSC MEH.

                • Supervision: CSC MEH.

                • Validation: CSC MEH.

                • Visualization: CSC MEH.

                • Writing – original draft: CSC MEH.

                • Writing – review & editing: CSC MEH.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6130-9349
                Article
                PONE-D-16-45998
                10.1371/journal.pone.0171569
                5293237
                28166257
                f2f52b70-71bc-4b2c-b63d-3aa936b719a8
                © 2017 Clements, Hay

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 19 November 2016
                : 22 January 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 0, Pages: 14
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001, National Science Foundation;
                Award ID: OCE- 0929119
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000002, National Institutes of Health;
                Award ID: U19TW007401
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Teasley Endowment to the Georgia Institute of Technology
                Award Recipient :
                Financial support provided by NSF grant OCE- 0929119, NIH ICBG grant U19TW007401, and the Teasley Endowment to the Georgia Institute of Technology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Echinoderms
                Starfish
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Marine Biology
                Coral Reefs
                Earth Sciences
                Marine and Aquatic Sciences
                Marine Biology
                Coral Reefs
                Earth Sciences
                Marine and Aquatic Sciences
                Reefs
                Coral Reefs
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Marine Biology
                Corals
                Earth Sciences
                Marine and Aquatic Sciences
                Marine Biology
                Corals
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Trophic Interactions
                Predation
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Trophic Interactions
                Predation
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Marine Ecosystems
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Marine Ecosystems
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Fishes
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Conservation Science
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Reef Ecosystems
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Reef Ecosystems
                Custom metadata
                Datasets used in this study will be available online from the BCO-DMO data system ( http://www.bco-dmo.org/project/480717).

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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