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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Species–area relationships and marine conservation

Joseph E. Neigel
- 01 Feb 2003 - 
- Vol. 13, Iss: 1, pp 138-145
TLDR
Because the SPAR does not require detailed knowledge of the requirements of individual species, it is still used to estimate local species richness and to predict the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on biodiversity.
Abstract
The species–area relationship (SPAR) was the central paradigm for the emerging science of reserve design in the 1970s and early 1980s. The apparent consistency of the SPAR for natural areas suggested that it could be used to predict the number of species that would be maintained within the isolated confines of a nature reserve. This proposed use of the SPAR led to heated debates about how best to partition space among reserves. However, by the end of the 1980s, the SPAR was no longer a central issue in reserve design. There was too much uncertainty about the underlying causes of the SPAR to trust that it would hold for reserves. The SPAR was also inappropriate for the design of single-species reserves and thus did not answer the traditional needs of wildlife managers. Ecologists subsequently focused their reserve-design efforts on the management of individual populations to reduce the probability of extinction and the loss of genetic variation. Nevertheless, because the SPAR does not require detailed knowledge of the requirements of individual species, it is still used to estimate local species richness and to predict the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on biodiversity. These applications of the SPAR may be especially useful in the design of marine reserves, which often differ in purpose from conventional terrestrial reserves and may require fundamentally different approaches.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Marine Ecological Research in New Zealand: Developing Predictive Models through the Study of No-Take Marine Reserves

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors considered whether existing conceptual models of population and community structure based only on data from exploited systems lack the baseline information of natural states necessary to make accurate predictions for new reserves.
Journal ArticleDOI

Influence of marine reserve size and boundary length on the initial response of exploited reef fishes in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, USA

TL;DR: A significant, negative, but weakly correlated relationship was found between the relative rate of density change (RDC) for combined fish and the HI/HA ratio and reserve size and placement appeared to have a minimal effect upon RDC.
Journal ArticleDOI

Impacts of data quality on the setting of conservation planning targets using the species–area relationship

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used a macrobenthic dataset containing 1314 sampling points and assigned each point to its associated habitat type, and then used the SAR-based approach and tested whether this was influenced by changes in the number of sampling points used to generate estimates of total species richness for each habitat type; the nonparametric estimator used to calculate species richness; and the level of habitat classification employed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Sea level change and the area of shallow-marine habitat: implications for marine biodiversity

TL;DR: In contrast to prevailing views, sea level rise does not consistently generate an increase in shelf area, nor does sea level fall consistently reduce shelf area as mentioned in this paper, and the diversity response to sea level change will be largely idiosyncratic.
References
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Book

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