Abstract. The term 'carryover effect' originally arose from repeated measures clinical experiments.However, the term has more recently been applied to ecological and evolutionary studies, often in migratory systems, which has led to an emphasis on non-lethal effects across seasons. In this article, we suggest that ecological carryover effects can also occur between life-history stages, developmental stages, physiological states, or social situations, and each will be associated with a discrete time-scale. Therefore, we propose the working definition: In an ecological context, carryover effects occur in any situation in which an individual's previous history and experience explains their current performance in a given situation. This concept of carryover effects provides an explicit but highly flexible context for examining the mechanisms that drive non-lethal interactions between distinct periods of an organism's lifetime, and unites the currently disparate fields investigating these effects in ecological systems. Greater communication among research fields and identifying mechanisms of carryover effects at different time scales will ultimately lead to a better understanding of the factors influencing variation in individual fitness.Key words: carry over effect; delayed effect; latent effect; life-history trade-off; maternal effect; reproductive trade-off.

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The recognition that physiological tools and knowledge have the potential to inform conservation policy has led to the definition of the nascent discipline of "conservation physiology." Indeed, conservation physiology has much to offer policy makers because of the rigorous experimental approach and the focus on elucidating cause-and-effect relationships. However, there remain a number of challenges that might retard the adoption of this approach. Here, we identify these challenges and suggest a path for both physiologists and conservation practitioners to integrate their respective fields. One issue is that threat assessments and conservation actions tend to focus on populations or species, whereas physiology tends to focus on individuals, cells, or molecules. Physiologists must determine if and how the physiology of individual organisms can influence population-level processes. It is also necessary to validate more tools in the "conservation physiology toolbox," and ensure a thorough understanding of the physiological biomarkers applied to conservation efforts. Research on imperiled taxa will be more useful to those making management decisions, rather than research focused on model species. We also recommend changes in the education of physiologists such that physiologists understand the process of policy making, and the needs of conservation practitioners.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of physiological tools and experimental approaches for the study of the biological consequences of catch‐and‐release angling practices for fishes. Beyond simply documenting problems, physiological data are also being used to test and refine different strategies for handling fish such that stress is minimised and survival probability maximised, and in some cases, even for assessing and facilitating recovery post‐release. The inherent sensitivity of physiological processes means that nearly every study conducted has found some level of – unavoidable – physiological disturbance arising from recreational capture and subsequent release. An underlying tenet of catch‐and‐release studies that incorporate physiological tools is that a link exists between physiological status and fitness. In reality, finding such relationships has been elusive, with further extensions of individual‐level impacts to fish populations even more dubious. A focus of this article is to describe some of the challenges related to experimental design and interpretation that arise when using physiological tools for the study of the biological consequences of catch‐and‐release angling. Means of overcoming these challenges and the extrapolation of physiological data from individuals to the population level are discussed. The argument is presented that even if it is difficult to demonstrate strong links to mortality or other fitness measures, let alone population‐level impacts of catch‐and‐release, there remains merit in using physiological tools as objective indicators of fish welfare, which is an increasing concern in recreational fisheries. The overarching objective of this paper is to provide a balanced critique of the use of physiological approaches in catch‐and‐release science and of their role in providing meaningful information for anglers and managers.

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