Modelling the Impact of Marine Reserves on a Population with Depensatory Dynamics

Space and Species Interactions in Welfare Estimates for Invasive Species Policy

Aquatic invasive species (AIS) can cause catastrophic damages to lake ecosystems. Bigheaded carp are one such species that pose a current threat to Lake Michigan. Bigheaded carp are expected to have spatially differentiated impacts on other aquatic species in the metapopulation. Policymakers must decide how much to invest in mitigation or conservation policies, if at all, by understanding how invasions impact social welfare or social wellbeing. Estimates of social welfare implications, however, may be biased if important interactions between species and space are overly simplified or aggregated out of the model. In this analysis, a bioeconomic model that links an ecological model with an economic model of recreational fishing behavior is used to complete a comparative analysis of the social welfare implications across several different ecological specifications to demonstrate what biases exist if species interactions are neglected or if ecological characteristics are assumed to be homogenous across space. Results of the bigheaded carp case study suggest that social welfare losses from the invasion vary substantially if species interactions are excluded and vary less if space is treated homogeneously.

Biological conservation through marine protected areas in the presence of alternative stable states

This article addresses how depleted stock can be restored by creation of marine reserve and species mobility when alternative stable states persist in a marine ecosystem. To understand the role of a marine protected area, we develop a two-patch version of an originally single-patch model. In the two-patch model, we prove that some of the locally stable equilibria are not stable equilibria from an ecological viewpoint. Similarly, some unstable equilibria determined classically from the mathematical model are no longer equilibria. It is shown that increasing reserve size may produce three alternative stable states in the presence of harvesting. Dynamic solutions have a tendency to reach an upper stable state from a lower stable state when reserve size is increased, but the opposite phenomenon (i.e., shifting to a lower stable state from an upper one) never occurs. This suggests that MPAs always have a positive effect in stock conservation even when alternative stable states inherently persist in marine ecosystems.

The Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Marine Reserves

Here we review the population, community, and evolutionary consequences of marine reserves. Responses at each level depend on the tendency of fisheries to target larger body sizes and the tendency for greater reserve protection with less movement within and across populations. The primary population response to reserves is survival to greater ages and sizes plus increases in the population size for harvested species, with greater response to reserves that are large relative to species' movement rates. The primary community response to reserves is an increase in total biomass and diversity, with the potential for trophic cascades and altered spatial patterning of metacommunities. The primary evolutionary response to reserves is increased genetic diversity, with the theoretical potential for protection against fisheries-induced evolution and selection for reduced movement. The potential for the combined outcome of these responses to buffer marine populations and communities against temporal environmental heterogeneity has preliminary theoretical and empirical support.