Well-designed and effectively managed networks of marine reserves can be effective tools for both fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. Connectivity, the demographic linking of local populations through the dispersal of individuals as larvae, juveniles or adults, is a key ecological factor to consider in marine reserve design, since it has important implications for the persistence of metapopulations and their recovery from disturbance. For marine reserves to protect biodiversity and enhance populations of species in fished areas, they must be able to sustain focal species (particularly fishery species) within their boundaries, and be spaced such that they can function as mutually replenishing networks whilst providing recruitment subsidies to fished areas. Thus the configuration (size, spacing and location) of individual reserves within a network should be informed by larval dispersal and movement patterns of the species for which protection is required. In the past, empirical data regarding larval dispersal and movement patterns of adults and juveniles of many tropical marine species have been unavailable or inaccessible to practitioners responsible for marine reserve design. Recent empirical studies using new technologies have also provided fresh insights into movement patterns of many species and redefined our understanding of connectivity among populations through larval dispersal. Our review of movement patterns of 34 families (210 species) of coral reef fishes demonstrates that movement patterns (home ranges, ontogenetic shifts and spawning migrations) vary among and within species, and are influenced by a range of factors (e.g. size, sex, behaviour, density, habitat characteristics, season, tide and time of day). Some species move <0.1-0.5 km (e.g. damselfishes, butterflyfishes and angelfishes), <0.5-3 km (e.g. most parrotfishes, goatfishes and surgeonfishes) or 3-10 km (e.g. large parrotfishes and wrasses), while others move tens to hundreds (e.g. some groupers, emperors, snappers and jacks) or thousands of kilometres (e.g. some sharks and tuna). Larval dispersal distances tend to be <5-15 km, and self-recruitment is common. Synthesising this information allows us, for the first time, to provide species, specific advice on the size, spacing and location of marine reserves in tropical marine ecosystems to maximise benefits for conservation and fisheries management for a range of taxa. We recommend that: (i) marine reserves should be more than twice the size of the home range of focal species (in all directions), thus marine reserves of various sizes will be required depending on which species require protection, how far they move, and if other effective protection is in place outside reserves; (ii) reserve spacing should be <15 km, with smaller reserves spaced more closely; and (iii) marine A. L. Green and others reserves should include habitats that are critical to the life history of focal species (e.g. home ranges, nursery grounds, migration corridors and spawning aggregations),...

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Community-based management and co-management are mainstream approaches to marine conservation and sustainable resource management. In the tropical Pacific, these approaches have proliferated through locally-managed marine areas (LMMAs). LMMAs have garnered support because of their adaptability to different contexts and focus on locally identified objectives, negotiated and implemented by stakeholders. While LMMA managers may be knowledgeable about their specific sites, broader understanding of objectives, management actions and outcomes of local management efforts remain limited. We interviewed 50 practitioners from the tropical Pacific and identified eight overarching objectives for LMMA establishment and implementation: (1) enhancing long-term sustainability of resource use; (2) increasing shortterm harvesting efficiency; (3) restoring biodiversity and ecosystems; (4) maintaining or restoring breeding biomass of fish or invertebrates; (5) enhancing the economy and livelihoods; (6) reinforcing customs; (7) asserting access and tenure rights; and (8) empowering communities. We reviewed outcomes for single or multiple objectives from published studies of LMMAs and go on to highlight synergies and trade-offs among objectives. The management actions or ʻtoolsʼ implemented for particular objectives broadly included: permanent closures; periodically-harvested closures; restrictions on gear, access or species; livelihood diversification strategies; and participatory and engagement processes. Although LMMAs are numerous and proliferating, we found relatively few cases in the tropical Pacific that adequately described how objectives and management tools were negotiated, reported the tools implemented, or empirically tested outcomes and seldom within a regional context. This paper provides some direction for addressing these research gaps.

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In numerous and important situations across the globe, the transition from designs to actions in conservation planning requires multiple iterations. Regional designs need to be updated progressively as some applied actions depart spatially from the areas notionally selected for conservation, or as some intended actions prove infeasible or undesirable. For researchers and organizations to fully capitalize on the enormous investment in conservation designs around the world, regional designs must be seen, not as static products, but as starting points for ongoing adaptation. We explain 18 reasons why regional designs need to be adapted, either in anticipation of actions or as actions are progressively applied. Our reasons are in four groups: early fine-tuning; mistakes and surprises; new data; and major overhaul. We show that the relative importance of these reasons varies between three planning situations: 1. rapid application, when conservation actions are applied simultaneously across all parts of regional designs; 2. protracted application, when, more typically, actions are applied incrementally over extended periods; and 3. revision of regional designs, either mandated or spontaneous. We then explore the conceptual, operational, institutional, and policy implications of designs being, or needing to be, dynamic. The weaknesses in methods for conservation planning are most starkly revealed by the need to adapt designs during protracted application of actions on private or community-managed lands and marine waters.

Incorporating connectivity into the design of marine protected areas (MPAs) has met with conceptual, theoretical, and practical challenges, which include: 1) the need to consider connectivity for multiple species with different dispersal abilities, and 2) the role played by variable habitat quality in determining the spatial patterns of connectivity. We propose an innovative approach, combining biophysical modeling with a routinely-used tool for marine-reserve design (Marxan), to address both challenges by using ecologically-informed connectivity parameters. We showed how functional demographic connectivity for four candidate reef-associated species with varying dispersal abilities and a suite of connectivity metrics weighted by habitat quality can be used to set conservation objectives and inform MPA placement. Overall, the strength of dispersal barriers varied across modeled species and, also across species, we found a lack of spatial concordance of reefs that were high-quality sources, self-persistent, and stepping-stones. Including spatially-heterogeneous habitat quality made a considerable difference to connectivity patterns, significantly reducing the potential reproductive output from many reefs. We also found that caution is needed in combining connectivity data from modeled species into multi-species matrices, which do not perform reliably as surrogates for all connectivity metrics of individual species. We then showed that restricting the habitat available for conservation has an inequitable impact on different connectivity objectives and species, with greatest impact on betweenness centrality and long-distance dispersers. We used Brazilian coral reefs as a case study but our approach is applicable to both marine and terrestrial conservation planning, and offers a holistic way to design functionally-connected reserves to tackle the complex issues relevant to planning for persistence.

Quantifying the extent to which existing reserves meet conservation objectives and identifying gaps in coverage are vital to developing systematic protected-area networks. Despite widespread recognition of the Philippines as a global priority for marine conservation, limited work has been undertaken to evaluate the conservation effectiveness of existing marine protected areas (MPAsPalabras Clave: análisis de discontinuidades,áreas marinas protegidas, arrecifes de coral, biodiversidad, conservación marina basada en la comunidad, Filipinas

Regional systematic conservation planning is an effective approach to marine protected area (MPA) network design, ensuring complementarity, and functional connectivity of areas. However, regional planning and local conservation actions do not properly inform one another. One outcome is the failure of regional designs to guide conservation actions. Another is that site-based MPAs constitute collections rather than functional systems for marine conservation. Understanding decisions related to spatial scale in conservation planning is essential for the development of ecologically functional networks of MPAs. Decisions about scale require that planners address trade-offs between the respective advantages and limitations of different considerations in several parts of the planning process. We provide the first comprehensive review of decisions about spatial scale that influence planning outcomes. We illustrate these decisions and the trade-offs involved with planning exercises undertaken in the Coral Triangle. We provide a framework in which decisions about spatial scale can be made explicit and investigated further. The framework helps to link theory and application in conservation planning, facilitates learning, and promotes the application of conservation actions that are both regionally and locally significant.