Abstract
BackgroundCaptive breeding programs are one of the many tools used by conservation practitioners as a means of conserving, supporting, and supplementing populations of imperilled species. Captive breeding programs exist around the globe for freshwater mussels and fishes, but the availability of evidence exploring the effectiveness of these programs has not yet been explored using systematic map criteria. This systematic map aims to identify, collate and describe the evidence that exists on the effectiveness of captive breeding programs, for the purpose of achieving conservation targets for imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels in the wild. The outputs of this systematic map will help to inform conservation managers and policy makers who are responsible for protecting imperilled freshwater species by identifying existing information and highlighting key information gaps for captive breeding programs operating in temperate regions.MethodsThis systematic map will search for, compile, and map existing literature on the effectiveness of captive breeding programs for the conservation of imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels. The systematic map will search using five bibliographic databases, two public search engines, and 19 specialist websites and will include both primary and grey literature. All studies that discuss details related to captive breeding programs for the conservation of imperilled freshwater fishes and/or mussels in temperate regions will be included in the map. The systematic map will produce a narrative report describing the evidence, including knowledge gaps evidence clusters, and a MS-Excel searchable database of articles and extracted metadata.
Highlights
MethodsThis systematic map will search for, compile, and map existing literature on the effectiveness of captive breeding programs for the conservation of imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels
Captive breeding programs are one of the many tools used by conservation practitioners as a means of conserving, supporting, and supplementing populations of imperilled species
Captive breeding programs are typically recommended in conjunction with other recovery measures, such as habitat restoration efforts and other activities to reduce threats to species in the wild
Summary
The review will follow the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence Guidelines and Standards for Evidence Synthesis in Environmental Management [18] and conform to ROSES reporting standards [19] (see Additional file 1). The categories are combined using “AND” in the following general format: (population) AND (intervention substring) AND (outcome substring) The focus of this systematic map is to collate existing information on captive breeding programs for achieving conservation targets for imperilled freshwater fishes and mussels in the wild. Articles or datasets found by means other than database or search engine searches (i.e., specialist website or other literature searches) will be entered at the second stage of this screening process (i.e., full text) but will not be included in consistency checks. A list of all articles excluded at the full text level will be provided as a additional file to the systematic map and will include the reason for exclusion. The intention of the captive breeding program can include: 1. Supplementation: The purpose of the captive breeding program should be supplementation as defined by Waples et al [23] to be “the intentional demographic integration of hatchery and natural population, with the goal of improving the status of an existing natural population (either in an absolute sense or relative to what its status would be without supplementation).”
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