Quantifying the Spatial Ecology of Wide-Ranging Marine Species in the Gulf of California: Implications for Marine Conservation Planning

José Daniel Anadón,Leah R Gerber,Anne Gondor,Caterina D'Agrosa,Steven J Bograd

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0028400

José Daniel Anadón, Leah R Gerber + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0028400

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Abstract

There is growing interest in systematic establishment of marine protected area (MPA) networks and representative conservation sites. This movement toward networks of no-take zones requires that reserves are deliberately and adequately spaced for connectivity. Here, we test the network functionality of an ecoregional assessment configuration of marine conservation areas by evaluating the habitat protection and connectivity offered to wide-ranging fauna in the Gulf of California (GOC, Mexico). We first use expert opinion to identify representative species of wide-ranging fauna of the GOC. These include leopard grouper, hammerhead sharks, California brown pelicans and green sea turtles. Analyzing habitat models with both structural and functional connectivity indexes, our results indicate that the configuration includes large proportions of biologically important habitat for the four species considered (25–40%), particularly, the best quality habitats (46–57%). Our results also show that connectivity levels offered by the conservation area design for these four species may be similar to connectivity levels offered by the entire Gulf of California, thus indicating that connectivity offered by the areas may resemble natural connectivity. The selected focal species comprise different life histories among marine or marine-related vertebrates and are associated with those habitats holding the most biodiversity values (i.e. coastal habitats); our results thus suggest that the proposed configuration may function as a network for connectivity and may adequately represent the marine megafauna in the GOC, including the potential connectivity among habitat patches. This work highlights the range of approaches that can be used to quantify habitat protection and connectivity for wide-ranging marine species in marine reserve networks.

Highlights

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has endorsed the ambitious goal of establishing a comprehensive, effectively managed, and ecologically representative national and regional systems of protected areas globally by 2012 [1]
The specific goals of the work are: 1) to select representative taxa from the pool of wide-ranging marine species occurring in the Gulf of California (GOC), 2) to quantify the habitat protection provided to wideranging marine species by the ecoregional assessment (ERA) network and 3) to assess the connectivity offered by the ERA to the target species
The final result was these four species: a bird species that breeds in the GOC, the California brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus); a top-predator and wide-ranging fish, the scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewinii); a more mobilitylimited fish, the leopard grouper (Mycteroperca rosacea); and a wideranging turtle mainly living on seagrasses in the GOC, the green turtle (Chelonia mydas)

Summary

Introduction

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has endorsed the ambitious goal of establishing a comprehensive, effectively managed, and ecologically representative national and regional systems of protected areas globally by 2012 [1]. Due to its high productivity and diversity, the Gulf of California (GOC) is considered a conservation priority area both in Mexico as well as internationally [5]. To reinforce the marine protection in this area, Comunidad and Biodiversidad (COBI) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) completed a marine ecoregional assessment (ERA) in the Gulf of California (GOC) and near shore Pacific coast of southern Baja California, Mexico (Fig. 1; [7]). This proposal, which combined both species and habitat conservation goals, identified 54 priority areas for conservation covering 26% of the ecoregion The aim of this assessment was to identify minimum areas for biodiversity representation and conservation and, in theory, if effective conservation management were implemented in each area, long-term persistence of most biodiversity and productivity in the GOC would be achieved

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