The effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning temperate fish: a systematic review protocol

Abstract

Background:Habitat is the foundation for healthy and productive fisheries. For substrate spawning fish, lack of appropriate spawning substrate is inherently limiting and a lack of access to suitable spawning habitat will lead to population collapse. When specific properties of a habitat (e.g., temperature, depth, vegetation composition) are matched to the species' ecological niche, a spawning habitat can be created or enhanced as a means of mitigating or offsetting the harmful effects of human development. Given the acceleration of habitat degradation in aquatic systems as a result of human activity and resultant loss of biodiversity, it is becoming ever more important to consider the effectiveness of the techniques being used to enhance or create habitat, to ensure management resources are being allocated wisely. The primary aim of this systematic review will be to assess the effectiveness of techniques currently being used to create or enhance spawning habitat for substrate spawning fish in temperate climate regions. Methods:This review will examine studies on the effectiveness of habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning fish. We will consider studies in either the North or South temperate climate regions, and include freshwater, estuarine, coastal, or marine environments. Relevant outcomes will include a range of measures used by authors to define effectiveness, including but not limited to the presence of eggs, successful emergence, or improved recruitment. This review will obtain relevant studies from online publication databases, specialist websites, and grey literature using a range of search engines and networking tools. Additional searches will be conducted using the bibliographies of relevant review publications. Study data will be extracted and appraised for quality, including study design, confounding factors, and statistical analysis. A narrative synthesis will be compiled and a meta-analysis will be completed should the data availability and quality allow for it.

Substrate type and brightness preference ofSchizothorax wangchiachiiandPercocypris pingijuveniles

“…Preferred spawning substrate is highly important because population collapses may occurred when substrate was restricted (Balon, 1981;Taylor, Rytwinski, Bennett, Smokorowski, & Cooke, 2017).…”

The effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate-spawning temperate fish: a systematic review

“…This review followed detailed methods described in the a priori systematic review protocol [33] and was performed according to the guidelines provided by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence [22].…”

“…The relevant subjects included all fish from egg (i.e., zygote or developing embryo) and larval stage (i.e., yolk sac larval stage) to age-0 (e.g., alevin, fry, young-of-the-year [YOY] that are no longer dependent on a yolk sac) as well as spawning adults. A decision was made by the Advisory Team to modify the criteria described in the protocol [33] to exclude articles focusing entirely on juvenile fish. This decision was made to ensure the focus of this review remained on effectiveness of spawning habitat and not nursery/rearing habitat.…”

“…Relevant comparators included: (1) before data at the same study site, (2) a similar section of the same waterbody with no intervention applied, (3) a nearby waterbody with comparable habitat characteristics and no intervention applied. Contrary to what was proposed in the protocol [33], articles where evaluation of a spawning habitat creation or enhancement intervention was compared to an alternative level of that intervention (rather than to a no intervention comparator group) were excluded. We decided these studies were of limited value because they could not be compared to studies with nonintervention comparators in a quantitative analysis.…”

Evidence‐based restoration in the Anthropocene—from acting with purpose to acting for impact

“…In addition to the completed restoration‐relevant systematic reviews described above, there are others underway covering topics such as the effectiveness of spawning habitat creation or enhancement for substrate spawning temperate fish (Taylor et al ), the effects of prescribed burning in temperate and boreal forest on biodiversity (Eales et al ), and the effectiveness of non‐native fish eradication techniques in freshwater ecosystems (Donaldson & Cooke ). Such systematic reviews have typically been commissioned by government agencies tasked with allocating funding and other resources, which is a promising development that suggests many management agencies buy into the concept of evidence‐based restoration and are willing to incorporate systematic reviews into their science support programs (e.g.…”