Connectivity as a Management Tool for Coastal Ecosystems in Changing Oceans

Abstract

Recent theoretical management research has focused on systems from species to ecosystem at large scales (i.e., metapopulations and meta-ecosystems), and the links between habitats patches and subpopulations are of crucial importance to understand, predict, and manage resource dynamics. One of the key characteristics affecting the dynamics and demography of metapopulations is thus connectivity (Hanski, 1999; Kritzer & Sale, 2004; Moilanen & Nieminen, 2002), the exchange or flux of material between different locations (Cowen & Sponaugle, 2009). Because of its broad definition and growing relevance, “connectivity” is now employed in a number of fields, including metapopulation ecology. Consequently, several definitions of connectivity exist with the main differences between them lying in the spatial scale of study (Kadoya, 2009). In this review, we consider connectivity in its broadest sense of demographic or population connectivity: the exchange of individuals among geographically separated subpopulations in a metapopulation (Cowen & Sponaugle, 2009)