Protecting Connectivity Promotes Successful Biodiversity and Fisheries Conservation

Abstract

The global decline of coral reefs had led to calls for strategies that reconcile biodiversity conservation and fisheries benefits. Still considerable gaps in our understanding of the spatial ecology of ecosystem services remain. We combined spatial information on larval dispersal networks and estimated of human pressure to test the importance of connectivity for ecosystem service provision. We found that reefs receiving larvae from highly connected dispersal corridors were associated with high fish species richness. Generally larval sinks contained twice as much as fish biomass as sources and exhibited greater resilience human pressure when protected. Despite their potential to support biodiversity persistence and sustainable fisheries up to 70% of important dispersal corridors, sinks and source reefs remain unprotected, emphasizing the need to increase protection of networks of well-connected reefs.