Long-Distance Benefits of Marine Reserves: Myth or Reality?

Stéphanie Manel, Nicolas Loiseau, Marco Andrello, Katharina Fietz, Raquel Goñi, Aitor Forcada, Philippe Lenfant, Stuart Kininmonth, Concepción Marcos, Virginie Marques, Sandra Mallol, Angel Pérez-Ruzafa, Corinna Breusing, Oscar Puebla and David Mouillot, 2019. Long-Distance Benefits of Marine Reserves: Myth or Reality? Trends in Ecology and Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.01.002

Abstract: Long-distance (>40-km) dispersal from marine reserves is poorly documented; yet, it can provide essential benefits such as seeding fished areas or connecting marine reserves into networks. From a meta-analysis, we suggest that the spatial scale of marine connectivity is underestimated due to the limited geographic extent of sampling designs. We also found that the largest marine reserves (>1000 km2) are the most isolated. These findings have important implications for the assessment of evolutionary, ecological, and socio-economic long-distance benefits of marine reserves. We conclude that existing methods to infer dispersal should consider the up-to-date genomic advances and also expand the spatial scale of sampling designs. Incorporating longdistance connectivity in conservation planning will contribute to increase the benefits of marine reserve networks.

Keywords: connectivity, global network, long-distance dispersal, marine reserves, marine protected areas