Identifying critical regions in small-world marine metapopulations

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111461108
• Publication Date: 2011-10-11T05:31:58Z
• Authors: James R. Watson; David A. Siegel; Bruce E. Kendall; Satoshi Mitarai; Andrew Rassweiller; Steven D. Gaines
• Keywords: Metapopulation; Marine protected area; Marine Spatial Planning; Marine ecosystem; Robustness

The precarious state of many nearshore marine ecosystems has prompted the use protected areas as a tool for management and conservation. However, there remains substantial debate over their design and, in particular, how to best account spatial dynamics species. Many commercially important species are sedentary adults, with limited home ranges. It is larvae that they disperse greater distances, traveling ocean currents sometimes hundreds kilometers. As result, these exist spatially complex systems connected subpopulations. Here, we explicitly mutual dependence subpopulations approach area terms network robustness. Our goal characterize topology metapopulation networks response perturbation, identify critical whose protection would reduce risk stock collapse. We define using realistic estimates larval dispersal generated from circulation simulations explicit models, then explore robustness node-removal simulation experiments. Nearshore metapopulations show small-world properties, set highly hub removal maximally disrupts network. Protecting reduces systemic failure focus on catastrophe avoidance provides unique perspective planning areas.