| Project Detail |
Understand fish spawner-recruit relationships for sustainable fisheries management Traditional fisheries management assumes that adult abundance and fecundity are the primary drivers of fish population growth, akin to land animals. However, marine fish possess unique traits, such as high fecundity, early life dispersal, and specific spawning behaviours, which differentiate them from their terrestrial counterparts. The reproductive resilience paradigm (RRP) evaluates a stock’s productivity based on various reproductive traits. Supported by Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the Fish-PARENTHOOD project aims to apply this paradigm to a species with well-documented reproductive behaviours and distinct spatial ecology. The project will model spawning site selection and reproductive timing, integrating these data into an early life dispersal model. Its goal is to enhance understanding of spawner-recruit relationships and predict future fishery productivity. Traditional fisheries management assumes population growth is driven by adult abundance and/or fecundity, similar to terrestrial vertebrates. However, marine fish have complex spawner-recruit systems made up of many traits which differ from terrestrial animals and drive species-specific productivity. This includes extreme fecundity, early life dispersal, spawning site selection, and reproductive behavior such as aggregate spawning. The “reproductive resilience paradigm” (RRP) recognizes these differences and evaluates a suite of fixed, behavioral, and varying traits (based on ecological context) to assess a stock’s vulnerability and productivity. The goal of this project is to apply the principles of the RRP to a species that has been monitored over the long term and has well-documented reproductive behaviors and diverging spatial ecology throughout its life cycle. This data will be used to model movements associated with spawning site selection and reproductive timing, which data will then be integrated into an early life dispersal model. Results will be ground-truthed through juvenile abundance indices and genetic parentage analyses. This ecosystem-based approach, based on the RRP, is on the cutting edge of understanding spawner-recruit relationships, and ultimately being able to predict future fishery productivity, crucial components for sustainable fisheries management in the Anthropocene. |
