Cultivation/depensation effects on juvenile survival and recruitment: implications for the theory of fishing

Large, dominant fish species that are the basis of many fisheries may be naturally so successful due partly to "cultivation effects," where adults crop down forage species that are potential competitors/predators of their own juveniles. Such effects imply a converse impact when adult abundance is severely reduced by fishing: increases in forage species may then cause lagged, apparently depensatory decreases in juvenile survival. Depensatory effects can then delay or prevent stock rebuilding. Cultivation effects are apparently common in freshwater communities and may also explain low recruitment success following severe declines of some major marine stocks such as Newfoundland Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Risk of depensatory effects should be a major target of recruitment research, and management policies should aim for considerably higher spawning abundances than has previously been assumed necessary based on recruitment data collected during adult stock declines associated with fishery development.

[1]  Lennart Persson,et al.  Size-dependent life-history traits promote catastrophic collapses of top predators , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  Ding-Geng Chen,et al.  Incorporating Allee effects in fish stock-recruitment models and applications for determining reference points , 2002 .

[3]  C. Peterson.  Recruitment overfishing in a bivalve mollusc fishery: hard clams (Mercenaria mercenaria) in North Carolina , 2002 .

[4]  J. Anderson,et al.  Offshore spawning and year-class strength of northern cod (2J3KL) during the fishing moratorium, 1994-1996 , 2001 .

[5]  Ransom A. Myers,et al.  What is the carrying capacity for fish in the ocean? A meta-analysis of population dynamics of North Atlantic cod , 2001 .

[6]  S Rogers,et al.  The effects of fishing on marine ecosystems and communities , 2000 .

[7]  Villy Christensen,et al.  Representing Density Dependent Consequences of Life History Strategies in Aquatic Ecosystems: EcoSim II , 2000, Ecosystems.

[8]  Ransom A. Myers,et al.  Maximum reproductive rate of fish at low population sizes , 1999 .

[9]  P. Shelton,et al.  Should depensation be dismissed as a possible explanation for the lack of recovery of the northern cod (Gadus morhua) stock , 1999 .

[10]  M. Mifflin.  Three to Tango , 1999 .

[11]  N. Bax.  The significance and prediction of predation in marine fisheries , 1998 .

[12]  M. Hansen,et al.  Factors Affecting Recruitment of Walleyes in Escanaba Lake, Wisconsin, 1958–1996 , 1998 .

[13]  L. Persson,et al.  Competing predators and prey : Juvenile bottlenecks in whole-lake experiments , 1998 .

[14]  Stephen J. Hall,et al.  The Effects Of Fishing On Mariane Ecosystems And Communities , 1998 .

[15]  P. Spencer,et al.  Effect of nonlinear predation rates on rebuilding the Georges Bank haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) stock , 1997 .

[16]  P. Spencer,et al.  Patterns of population variability in marine fish stocks , 1997 .

[17]  Ray Hilborn,et al.  Depensation in fish stocks : a hierarchic Bayesian meta-analysis , 1997 .

[18]  Ransom A. Myers,et al.  Spatial scales of interannual recruitment variations of marine, anadromous, and freshwater fish , 1997 .

[19]  Daniel E. Schindler,et al.  THE NILE PERCH IN LAKE VICTORIA: INTERACTIONS BETWEEN PREDATION AND FISHERIES , 1997 .

[20]  Ransom A. Myers,et al.  Hypotheses for the decline of cod in the North Atlantic , 1996 .

[21]  C. Goldman,et al.  A meta-analysis of the freshwater trophic cascade. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[22]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  Invulnerable Prey and the Paradox of Enrichment , 1996 .

[23]  V. Smetácek,et al.  Organism life cycles, predation, and the structure of marine pelagic ecosystems , 1996 .

[24]  Marten Scheffer,et al.  Implications of spatial heterogeneity for the paradox of enrichment , 1995 .

[25]  A. Rosenberg,et al.  Population Dynamics of Exploited Fish Stocks at Low Population Levels , 1995, Science.

[26]  Predator Interference across Trophic Chains , 1995 .

[27]  James W. Peck,et al.  Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) Populations in Lake Superior and Their Restoration in 1959–1993 , 1995 .

[28]  Lennart Persson,et al.  Prey Refuges Affecting Interactions Between Piscivorous Perch and Juvenile Perch and Roach , 1995 .

[29]  L. Rudstam,et al.  Top-down control in the pelagic Baltic ecosystem [review] , 1994 .

[30]  K. Frank,et al.  Fisheries Ecology in the Context of Ecological and Evolutionary Theory , 1994 .

[31]  P. Mace,et al.  Relationships between Common Biological Reference Points Used as Thresholds and Targets of Fisheries Management Strategies , 1994 .

[32]  A. Rosenberg,et al.  In search of thresholds for recruitment overfishing , 1994 .

[33]  J. Wootton,et al.  The Nature and Consequences of Indirect Effects in Ecological Communities , 1994 .

[34]  Francis Juanes,et al.  Recruitment Limitation as a Consequence of Natural Selection for Use of Restricted Feeding Habitats and Predation Risk Taking by Juvenile Fishes , 1993 .

[35]  Xi He,et al.  The trophic cascade in lakes: Fish behavioral and community responses to manipulation , 1993 .

[36]  Joan Saldaña,et al.  Body sizes of animal predators and animal prey in food webs , 1993 .

[37]  L. Crowder,et al.  Empirical and Theoretical Approaches to Size-Based Interactions and Recruitment Variability in Fishes , 1992 .

[38]  Individual-Based Modeling: Application to Walleye Stocking , 1992 .

[39]  Alec D. MacCall,et al.  Dynamic Geography of Marine Fish Populations , 1990 .

[40]  A Barkai,et al.  Predator-Prey Role Reversal in a Marine Benthic Ecosystem , 1988, Science.

[41]  Carl J. Walters,et al.  Nonstationarity of Production Relationships in Exploited Populations , 1987 .

[42]  K. Drinkwater,et al.  Testing predictions of marine fish and shellfish landings from environmental variables , 1987 .

[43]  S. Gutreuter,et al.  Importance of Body Size to the Recruitment Process in Largemouth Bass Populations , 1985 .

[44]  M. B. Schaefer,et al.  A study of the dynamics of the fishery for yellowfin tuna in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean , 1957 .

[45]  F. Neave.  Principles affecting the size of pink and chum salmon populations in British Columbia , 1953 .

[46]  H. Swingle.  Relationships and dynamics of balanced and unbalanced fish populations , 1951 .

[47]  H. Swingle.  Experiments with Various Rates of Stocking Bluegills, Lepomis Macrochirus Rafinesque, and Largemouth Bass, Micropterus Salmoides (Lacépède), in Ponds , 1951 .