Marine fish life history strategies: applications to fishery management

“…primary life-history strategies that represent the endpoints of a triangular continuum arising from trade-offs among the three basic demographic parameters of survival, fecundity, and onset and duration of reproduction (e.g., Winemiller 1989, Vila-Gispert et al. 2002, King and McFarlane 2003).”

“…of fish population traits have aimed to classify fish strategies at the species level (Winemiller & Rose, 1992; Vila-Gispert & Moreno-Amich, 2002; King & McFarlane, 2003) and eventually to relate species traits to their latitudinal position (Gotelli & Pyron, 1991; Vila-Gispert et al., 2002).”

“Because they have slow growth, late maturation, low fecundity and long reproductive cycles, sharks in general (and silky and oceanic white tip sharks in particular) are among the least resilient of fish species to intense exploitation (Musick et al. 2000; King and McFarlane 2003).”

“…cycle, continue growing relatively rapidly as they reproduce, have unfished populations that are dominated by juvenile size classes, and do not exhibit a modal adult size, are opportunist and intermediate strategists (King and McFarlane, 2003) and tend towards being “r-strategists” (Pianka, 1970).”

“2001 ), and inferences about vulnerability based on life history characteristics ( Musick et al. 2000 ; King and McFarlane 2003 ).”

“Multivariate ordination techniques have often been used to identify species that possess suites of characteristics that confer resilience or susceptibility to exploitation (King and McFarlane, 2003; Winemiller and Rose, 1992).”

“This group also includes tunas, which, unlike Pacific cod, are highly migratory, thereby able to buffer the effects of poor ecosystem conditions (Polovina, 1996; McFarlane et al., 2000; King and McFarlane, 2003).”

“…fish assemblages provide a basis to develop predictive models to help conserve native species and create riskassessment protocols for non-native fishes based on generalised population dynamics and responses to environmental conditions (King & McFarlane 2003; Winemiller 2005; Welcomme et al. 2006).”

“Life history and phenotypic adaptations to natural and anthropogenic stressors have been studied in fish systems for many years (Alm 1959; Adams 1980; Thorpe 1990; Winemiller and Rose 1992; McCann and Shuter 1997; Jennings et al. 1998; Johannes 1998; Pope et al. 2000; Rochet 2000; King and McFarlane 2003; Klementsen e…”

“…healthy biomass of mature individuals, the so-called ‘spawning stock biomass’, is also needed to safeguard the future of the stock against the risk of reducing its reproductive capacity, or ‘recruitment overfishing’ as it is known among fisheries scientists (King and McFarlane, 2003; Larkin, 1978).”

“Previous studies on marine and freshwater fish (e.g., Kawasaki 1980; Baltz 1984; Vila-Gispert et al. 2002; Vila-Gispert and Moreno-Amich 2002; King and McFarlane 2003 ) support Winemiller’s hypothesis, but the present results go a step further by formally relating species adaptive strategies to environmental gradients.”

“Such conceptual management scenarios based on life-history traits may be particularly useful for newly exploited species (King and McFarlane, 2003; Doyle and Mier, 2012).”

“Life-cycle traits are determinant for the resilience to fishery exploitation (King & McFarlane 2003).”

“Among five life-history strategists of commercial species (King and McFarlane, 2003), the above mechanistic linkages were available only for three strategists in the KOE (Supplementary Appendix Table S1; Yatsu et al., 2008): (i) opportunistic strategists, having a short lifespan, early maturation,…”

“Like many elasmobranch fishes, skates appear to be ‘equilibrium’ life-history strategists (Winemiller & Rose, 1992), exhibiting very low intrinsic rates of growth, and sustainable yields in fisheries can be achieved only at very low-to-moderate fishing mortality rates (King & McFarlane, 2003).”

“For example, fecundity, growth rate, trophic level, and other traits might influence the response of fish populations to environmental signals and fishing effects (King & McFarlane, 2003).”

“Within this context, many of the species of groupers within threatened categories are best described as periodic [52] or episodic strategists [53] based on their large body size, slow growth, late maturity, and long-lifespan (e.”

“Exploitation in coral reef fisheries is often highly selective compared with commercialized fisheries of industrialized nations, thus improving knowledge of life-history traits for harvested populations can be used to inform management decision making by identifying species most sensitive to a given rate of fishing mo…”

“For example, the average temperature for larval development (trait 10) of Ictalurus punctatus was used for the unknown developmental temperature of Ameiurus nebulosus larvae, as carried out in similar studies (King and McFarlane 2003).”

“…status for the large majority of fish species is unknown or poorly known (Costello et al. 2012), exploitation scenarios using knowledge of fish life histories and their relative sensitivities to fishing pressure provide a starting framework to management (King and McFarlane 2003; Winemiller 2005).”

“…recognized that life history traits are fundamental to the mechanistic links between environmental change and recruitment (Winemiller and Rose, 1992; Spencer and Collie, 1997; King and McFarlane, 2003, 2006; Conover et al., 2005; Field and Ralston, 2005; Shuter and Abrams, 2005; Winemiller, 2005).”

“The life history of skates, with relatively slow growth to large size and late maturity with low fecundity, indicates that they might be vulnerable to overfishing even as bycatch (King and McFarlane 2003).”

“Marine fishes have evolved life history strategies to cope with variability in their environment, ranging from short-lived species with highly variable stock dynamics that respond immediately to changes in their environment to extremely long-lived species whose population dynamics are mainly stable ( King & McFarlane…”

“The scombrids appear to be intermediate strategists within the OpportunisticPeriodic-Equilibrium life history triangle, but this was based on two species of scombrids, albacore tuna Thunnus alalunga and chub mackerel Scomber japonicus (Winemiller and Rose 1992; King and McFarlane 2003).”

“Researchers often determine the species-specific response to disturbances causing mortality (the degree of resistance) or recovery by analyzing their autecological attributes and life histories (e.g., Frisk et al., 2001; King and McFarlane, 2003; Magalhaes et al., 2003; Winemiller, 2005; Olden et al., 2007; Brose et a…”

“…in the life history composition of fish 401 communities: fast growing, rapidly maturing species will be found in heavily fished areas, whereas 402 slow growing, late maturing species will be more prevalent in lightly fished, or unexploited areas 403 (King and McFarlane, 2003, Winemiller, 2005).”

“As a group, elasmobranchs can be classified as equilibrium (K-selected) strategists and typically share the biological characteristics of low fecundity, late maturity, high juvenile survivorship, slow body growth, and long life span (Hoenig and Gruber 1990; Winemiller and Rose 1992; Camhi et al. 1998; King and McFarla…”

“As they correspond to the underlying determinants for population responses to fishing impacts, climate and ocean changes (King and McFarlane, 2003), these parameters are commonly used as indicators in fisheries ecology to follow the health of a given population.”

“This is a matter of great concern since these taxa are being severely exploited in the north-east Atlantic despite the fact that their life history traits (characterised by slow growth, late maturity and low fecundity) render them particularly vulnerable to fisheries-induced mortality rates (Stevens et al. 2000; King…”

“These life history characteristics would categorize ig and longnose skate within a marine resource paradigm as quilibrium strategists (King and McFarlane, 2004).”

“…have applied clustering methods to a smaller subset of species than we have available, e.g., for North American fishes (Winemiller & Rose, 1992), selected North Pacific marine fishes (King & McFarlane, 2003), freshwater fishes (Mims et al., 2010), or European marine fishes (Pecuchet et al., 2017).”

“King & McFarlane 2003 ), such programmes are in their infancy in Australia.”

“…some long‐lived organisms that navigate a gauntlet of variable environmental events during early life often exhibit sporadically strong year classes (King & McFarlane, 2003; Spencer & Collie, 1997), unusually warm and prolonged extreme (1)Z= x̄f− x̄r 𝜎r , F I G U R E 2 Flowchart of the process…”

“For example, for opportunistic species with early maturation and shorter generation times, management that focuses on maintaining a minimum level of spawning stock biomass will be essential (King and McFarlane, 2003).”

“Given that these life-history parameters have been suggested to have a strong impact on species behaviour under fishing (King and McFarlane 2003), applying these calculations allows explicit avoidance of modelling species as essentially identical biomass pools (the “cod is not a tuna” problem,…”

“As strongly K-selected species (Adams 1980; King and MacFarlane 2003; Tilley 2011), rays have few young and make a high reproductive investment in them, a life history whose success is predicated on a low total mortality rate of recruited offspring, including from fishing.”

“Recognized life history strategies of fishes (Winemiller & Rose, 1992; Villa-Gispert et al., 2002; Villa-Gispert & Moreno-Amich, 2002; King & McFarlane, 2003 ) include periodic, opportunistic, equilibrium, salmonid, and intermediate strategies.”

“The life histories of elasmobranchs are generally characterized by an equilibrium strategy (large-sized fish with late maturation, low fecundity, and a high degree of parental investment; King and McFarlane, 2003), and the skates studied are no exception to this rule.”

“Five vital parameters, namely Lm, Lb, f, k, and Tmax proposed by Cortés [41] were used in scenario 2, and six parameters (those in scenario 2 pluses one additional parameter, L1) proposed by King and Mcfarlane [38] were used in scenario 3.”

“…dynamics are characterized by an r-selected life history strategy: i.e. high population growth rates, r, fecundities, and natural mortalities; early maturation; and asymptotic stockrecruitment curves that rise steeply near the origin (Adams 1980, King & McFarlane 2003, Pikitch et al. 2014).”

“Such information is crucial for fisheries management, since life history traits represent key parameters used in stock assessments and comprise the core determinants of stock responses to both environmental and anthropogenic influences (King and McFarlane 2003; Shin et al. 2005).”

“Many fishes exhibit intermediate strategies between opportunistic, periodic, and equilibrium endpoints (Winemiller and Rose 1992, King and McFarlane 2003).”

“Maintaining an appropriate age structure and spawning stock biomass is particularly important in periodic type populations (Winemiller, 2005; King and MacFarlane, 2003).”

“…strategies are generally consistent with ‘opportunistic strategists’, which tend to be shortlived with small body size and size at maturation, relatively low individual fecundity, high growth rates, small eggs and little to no parental investment (King and McFarlane 2003; Winemiller and Rose 1992).”

“…examples are categorisations into morphological attributes such as size or fragility (Shin et al., 2005), while others are related to behaviour, for example mobility and feeding mode (Smale, 2008), and to life history traits, such as maximum size, fecundity or similar (King and McFarlane, 2003).”

“Fish species that are slow growing, long-lived, late to mature, and experience low natural mortality are consistently linked to reduced resilience and increased risk of population collapse in response to fishing (Jennings et al. 1998; Musick 1999; King and McFarlane 2003; Winemiller 2005).”

“As in Winemiller and Rose (1992) and King and McFarlane (2003), the ordination of species in this way results in the identification of major gradients in life history and ecological variation among species, and accordingly shows the delineation of species groups or categories based on these…”

“Although some fish species exemplify a single life history strategy, most exhibit intermediate strategies between opportunistic, periodic, and equilibrium endpoints (Hitt et al., 2020; King & McFarlane, 2003; Winemiller & Rose, 1992).”

“For example, life-history traits and vulnerability assessments were used to understand the sustainability of elasmobranch fishery [12]; potential for application to fisheries management[13]; prioritizing issues for fisheries management [14]; intrinsic vulnerability of marine fish taxa in different habitats [15]; vulne…”

“This possibly makes these species capable of adapting to environments characterized by variability (King & McFarlane, 2003) and could be key for their spread and establishment in the Mediterranean, as the ability to adapt to various environmental conditions is generally accepted as a precondition…”