PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Easton R. White
AU  - Marissa L. Baskett
AU  - Alan Hastings
TI  - Catastrophes, connectivity, and Allee effects in the design of marine reserve networks
AID  - 10.1101/750448
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 750448
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/30/750448.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/30/750448.full
AB  - Catastrophic events, like oil spills and hurricanes, occur in many marine systems. These events, although rare, can still have disproportionately large effects on population dynamics. One management strategy to buffer against catastrophes is the establishment of a marine reserve network. In a network, an individual reserve can be recolonized after a disturbance event by organisms from an unaffected reserve—acting as an insurance policy. Management choices about the size and spacing of reserves ultimately determines their success or failure. We use a set of simple models to examine how organism life-history and the disturbance regime interact to determine the optimal reserve spacing. Our results show that the optimal spacing between reserves increases when accounting for catastrophes. This result is accentuated when Allee effects interact with catastrophes to increase the probability of extinction. We also show that classic tradeoffs between conservation and fishing objectives disappear in the presence of catastrophes.