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Plans for habitat restoration will benefit from predictions of timescales for recovery. Theoretical models have been a powerful tool for informing practical guidelines in planning marine protected areas, suggesting restoration planning could also benefit from a theoretical framework. We developed a model that can predict recovery times following restoration action, under dispersal, recruitment and connectivity constraints. We apply the model to a case study of seagrass restoration and find recovery times following restoration action can vary greatly, from <1 to >20 years. The model also shows how recovery can be accelerated when restoration actions are matched to the constraints on recovery. For example, spreading of propagules can be used when connectivity is the critical restriction. The recovery constraints we articulated mathematically also apply to the restoration of coral reefs, mangroves, saltmarsh, shellfish reefs and macroalgal forests, so our model provides a general framework for choosing restoration actions that accelerate coastal habitat recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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At the crux of the debate over the global sustainability of fisheries is what society must do to prevent over‐exploitation and aid recovery of fisheries that have historically been over‐exploited. The focus of debates has been on controlling fishing pressure, and assessments have not considered that stock production may be affected by changes in fish habitat. Fish habitats are being modified by climate change, built infrastructure, destructive fishing practices and pollution. We conceptualize how the classification of stock status can be biased by habitat change. Habitat loss and degradation can result in either overly optimistic or overly conservative assessment of stock status. The classification of stock status depends on how habitat affects fish demography and what reference points management uses to assess status. Nearly half of the 418 stocks in a global stock assessment database use seagrass, mangroves, coral reefs and macroalgae habitats that have well‐documented trends. There is also considerable circumstantial evidence that habitat change has contributed to over‐exploitation or enhanced production of data‐poor fisheries, like inland and subsistence fisheries. Globally many habitats are in decline, so the role of habitat should be considered when assessing the global status of fisheries. New methods and global databases of habitat trends and use of habitats by fishery species are required to properly attribute causes of decline in fisheries and are likely to raise the profile of habitat protection as an important complementary aim for fisheries management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Freshwater ecosystems and their associated biota are under increasing threats from multiple stressors including climate and land‐use change. The conservation of these ecosystems must be based on an integration of data including species physiological tolerances, the biotic and abiotic drivers of the distribution of populations, and demographic processes, to provide the comprehensive ecological information necessary for management. This study used a Bayesian belief network (BBN) to synthesize research on northern river blackfish, a threatened species in the upper Condamine River, Australia, into a probabilistic framework capable of predicting the complex relationships that exist between environmental conditions and population success. This study tested how predicted air temperature scenarios for the years 2050 and 2080, and catchment restoration scenarios, would be expected to affect three indices of population success: adult abundance, juvenile abundance, and juvenile recruitment. Compared with current climatic conditions, climate warming scenarios reduced the probability of future population success by between 0.4% and 1.6%. These shifts were almost completely offset, and even improved, when riparian zones were restored at the catchment scale, where changes ranged from an overall decrease of 0.2% to an increase of 1%. To achieve the highest probability of population success, the impacts of warming stream temperatures and the degradation of riparian zones must be mitigated. However, the model showed that there is still a possibility of complete population failure under a wide range of conditions, even when conditions appear to be suitable. To maximize the future population success of river blackfish we recommend targeting the restoration of hydrologically active catchment areas where grazing strongly influences stream biota. The use of a BBN allowed the combination of multiple sources of information to solve complex ecological problems, including how multiple stressors may affect threatened freshwater species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been hypothesised that there is a functional correlation between brain size and metabolic rate in vertebrates. The present study tested this hypothesis in wild-caught adult mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki by testing for an intra-specific association between resting metabolic rate (RMR) and brain size while controlling for variation in body size, and through the examination of the effects of spatial enrichment and laboratory housing on body mass-independent measures of brain size and RMR. Controlling for body mass, there was no relationship between brain size and RMR in wild-caught fish. Contrary to predictions, spatial enrichment caused a decrease in mass-independent brain size, highlighting phenotypic plasticity in the adult brain. As expected, after controlling for differences in body size, wild-caught fish had relatively larger brains than fish that had been maintained in the laboratory for a minimum of six weeks, but wild-caught fish also had significantly lower mass-independent RMR. This study demonstrates that an organisms' housing environment can cause significant plastic changes to fitness related traits including brain size and RMR. We therefore conclude that current standard laboratory housing conditions may cause captive animals to be non-representative of their wild counterparts, potentially undermining the transferability of previous laboratory-based studies of aquatic ectothermic vertebrates to wild populations., (© 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.)