Jennifer E Caselle

University of California, Santa Barbara | UCSB · Marine Science Institute

Calls for using marine protected areas (MPAs) to achieve goals for nature and people are increasing globally. While the conservation and fisheries impacts of MPAs have been comparatively well‐studied, impacts on other dimensions of human use have received less attention. Understanding how humans engage with MPAs and identifying traits of MPAs that...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have gained attention as a conservation tool for enhancing ecosystem resilience to climate change. However, empirical evidence explicitly linking MPAs to enhanced ecological resilience is limited and mixed. To better understand whether MPAs can buffer climate impacts, we tested the resistance and recovery of marine com...

A global survey of coral reefs reveals that overfishing is driving resident shark species toward extinction, causing diversity deficits in reef elasmobranch (shark and ray) assemblages. Our species level analysis revealed global declines of 60 to 73% for five common resident reef shark species and that individual shark species were not detected at...

As part of the Decadal Management Review, and with support from California's Ocean Protection Council, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) initiated a working group to develop an understanding of how the State of California's Network of marine protected areas (MPAs) has performed over the past decade, and the lessons t...

The kelp forests of southern Patagonia have a large diversity of habitats, with remote islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, gulfs, channels, and fjords, which are comprised of a mixture of species with temperate and sub-Antarctic distributions, creating a unique ecosystem that is among the least impacted on Earth. We investigated the distribution, di...

Variation in behavior within marine and terrestrial species can influence the functioning of the ecosystems they inhabit. However, the contribution of social behavior to ecosystem function remains underexplored. Many coral reef fish species provide potentially insightful models for exploring how social behavior shapes ecological function because th...

Isolated coral reef habitats are unique systems to study the natural dynamics of coral traits and their natural acclimatization, adaptation, and recovery from global-scale stressors such as thermally induced bleaching events. This study evaluates the spatial and temporal changes in coral community attributes (diversity, live cover, and coral assemb...

Human-induced environmental change has affected ecosystems on a global scale, altering the ecology and evolutionary trajectories of various species. Fishing of marine predators, and any cascading effects on marine ecosystems, is of critical concern. Predators are thought to be an important reason for why fish shoal; thus, reducing predator populati...

Kelp habitat restoration is gaining traction as a management action to support recovery in areas affected by severe disturbances, thereby ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem services. Knowing when and where to restore is a major question. Using a single‐species population model, we consider how restoring inside marine protected areas (MPAs) mi...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a key tool for achieving goals for biodiversity conservation and human well-being, including improving climate resilience and equitable access to nature. At a national level, they are central components in the U.S. commitment to conserve at least 30% of U.S. waters by 2030. By definition, the primary goal of an MPA...

Hermatypic corals have the potential to construct calcium carbonate (CaCO3) reef‐framework, maintain habitats tridimensionality and contribute to both the biogeochemical and the geo‐ecological functionality of coral reefs. However, in the past decades, coral reef growth capacity has been affected by multiple and cumulative anthropogenic stressors,...

Monitoring is a crucial tool for measuring the progress and success of environmental policies and management programs. While many studies have evaluated the effectiveness of biodiversity sampling methods, few have compared their efficiency, which is crucial given the funding constraints present in all conservation efforts. In this study we demonstr...

Marine protected area (MPA) designs, including large-scale MPAs (LSMPAs; >150,000 km2), mobile MPAs (fluid spatiotemporal boundaries), and MPA networks, may offer different benefits to species and could enhance protection by encompassing spatiotemporal scales of animal movement. We sought to understand how well LSMPAs could benefit nine highly-mobi...

Kelp forests are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth. In combination with their close proximity to shore, the productivity and biodiversity of these ecosystems generate a wide range of ecosystem services including supporting (e.g., primary production, habitat), regulating (e.g., water flow, coastal erosion), provisioning (e.g., commercial...

Prey depletion may contribute to marine predator declines, yet the forage base required to sustain an unfished population of predatory fish at carrying capacity is unknown. We integrated demographic and physiological data within a Bayesian bioenergetic model to estimate annual consumption of a grey reef shark (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) population...

Correctly identifying the effects of a human impact on a system is a persistent challenge in ecology, driven partly by the variable nature of natural systems. This is particularly true in many marine fishery species, which frequently experience large temporal fluctuations in recruitment that produce interannual variations in populations. This varia...

Surface-canopy forming kelps provide the foundation for ecosystems that are ecologically, culturally, and economically important. However, these kelp forests are naturally dynamic systems that are also threatened by a range of global and local pressures. As a result, there is a need for tools that enable managers to reliably track changes in their...

Knowledge of the ecology of the fish fauna associated with kelp (primarily Macrocystis pyrifera ) forests in Southern Patagonia is scarce, especially in how abiotic and biotic variables influence their structure, diversity, and distribution. This information is important for the management and conservation of this unique ecosystem, which has minima...

Ecosystem patterning can arise from environmental heterogeneity, biological feedbacks that produce multiple persistent ecological states, or their interaction. One source of feedbacks is density‐dependent changes in behaviour that regulate species interactions. By fitting state‐space models to large‐scale (~500 km) surveys on temperate rocky reefs,...

This report was produced by a working group of the Ocean Protection Council’s Science Advisory Team (OPC SAT) and Ocean Science Trust on behalf of the Ocean Protection Council (OPC), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and Fish and Game Commission (FCG). In preparation for the first adaptive management review of California’s MPA netw...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) cover 3-7% of the world's ocean, and international organizations call for 30% coverage by 2030. Although numerous studies show that MPAs produce conservation benefits inside their borders, many MPAs are also justified on the grounds that they confer conservation benefits to the connected populations that span beyond th...

This dataset includes surgeonfish foraging metrics quantified during focal follow trials and includes: (a) bite composition, (b) bite rate, (c) foraging time, (d) foraging depth, and (e) forager size (cm). Data was collected at Palmyra Atoll on the back reef and fore reef habitats in 2013. Four common surgeonfishes (Acanthuridae) were selected as s...

Global climate change increasingly contributes to large changes in ecosystem structure. Timely management of rapidly changing marine ecosystems must be matched with methods to rapidly quantify and assess climate driven impacts to ecological communities. Here we create a species-specific, classification system for fish thermal affinities, using thre...

Global kelp forests are biodiverse and productive nearshore ecosystems that provide a wide range of ecosystem services, but they are at risk from both local stressors and global drivers of kelp loss. A structured decision making (SDM) framework can help guide kelp management and restoration decisions and investments toward interventions that are mo...

Behavioral interactions such as dominance are critical components of animal social lives, competitive abilities, and resulting distribution patterns with coexisting species. Strong interference competition can drive habitat separation, but less is known of the role of interference if agonistic interactions are weak. While most theoretical models as...

The Islas Marías Biosphere Reserve, made up of 4 islands in Pacific waters off central Mexico, supports a large diversity of marine life. However, scientific research was restricted for decades by the occupation of Isla María Madre by the Federal Penitentiary Colony of Mexico from 1905 to 2019. Aside from a list of coastal fish species published in...

Acute climate events like marine heatwaves have the potential to temporarily or permanently alter community structure with effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We aimed to quantify the magnitude and consistency of climate driven community shifts inside and outside Marine Protected Areas before and after a marine heatwave using a kelp for...

The number of protected areas that restrict or prohibit harvest of wild populations is growing. In general, protected areas are expected to increase the abundance of previously-harvested species. Whether a protected area achieves this expectation is typically evaluated by assessing trends in abundance after implementation. However, the underlying a...

An Amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The changing global climate is having profound effects on coastal marine ecosystems around the world. Structure, functioning, and resilience, however, can vary geographically, depending on species composition, local oceanographic forcing, and other pressures from human activities and use. Understanding ecological responses to environmental change a...

Animals across vertebrate taxa form social communities and often exist as fission–fusion groups. Central place foragers (CPF) may form groups from which they will predictably disperse to forage, either individually or in smaller groups, before returning to fuse with the larger group. However, the function and stability of social associations in pre...

Decades of overexploitation have devastated shark populations, leaving considerable doubt as to their ecological status1,2. Yet much of what is known about sharks has been inferred from catch records in industrial fisheries, whereas far less information is available about sharks that live in coastal habitats³. Here we address this knowledge gap usi...

Achieving sustainable development globally requires multilevel and interdisciplinary efforts and perspectives. Global goals shape priorities and actions at multiple scales, creating cascading impacts realized at the local level through the direction of financial resources and implementation of programs intended to achieve progress towards these met...

Behavioral interactions such as dominance are critical components of animal social lives, competitive abilities, and resulting distribution patterns with coexisting species. Strong interference competition can drive habitat separation, but less is known of the role of interference if agonistic interactions are weak. While most theoretical models as...

Fish abundance and diversity are core measurements taken by many nearshore marine monitoring projects. The most common approaches for counting fish include belt transects and timed counts by roving divers, each with its own limitations. Here we evaluate a fish counting method developed by the Channel Islands National Park’s Kelp Forest Monitoring P...

The kelp forests of southern South America are some of the least disturbed on the planet. The remoteness of this region has, until recently, spared it from many of the direct anthropo-genic stressors that have negatively affected these ecosystems elsewhere. Re-surveys of 11 locations at the easternmost extent of Tierra del Fuego originally conducte...

Ecosystems are changing at alarming rates due to climate change and a wide variety of other anthropogenic stressors. These stressors have the potential to cause phase shifts to less productive ecosystems. A major challenge for ecologists is to identify ecosystem attributes that enhance resilience and can buffer systems from shifts to less desirable...

It is challenging to assess long‐term trends in mobile, long‐lived and relatively rare species such as sharks. Despite ongoing declines in many coastal shark populations, conventional surveys might be too fleeting and too recent to describe population trends over decades to millennia. Placing recent shark declines into historical context should imp...

Twenty years ago, the creation of a new scientific program, the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), funded by the Packard Foundation, provided the opportunity to integrate—from the outset— research, monitoring, and outreach to the public, policymakers, and managers. PISCO’s outreach efforts were initially focused pr...

To support conservation practices, societal demand for understanding fundamental coastal ocean ecosystem mechanisms has grown in recent decades. Globally, these regions are among the world’s most productive, but they are highly vulnerable to extractive and non-extractive stresses. In 1999, we established the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studie...

A major goal of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) has been to understand the impacts of climate change and variability on the coastal ecosystems of the inner shelf of the California Current Large Marine System in particular, and other marine and even nonmarine systems more generally. Insights can result from de...

The life cycle of most benthic marine species includes a planktonic larval stage. Movement, largely by ocean currents, and survival during this stage drive patterns of variability and long-term persistence in adult populations, as well as connectivity among spatially separated populations. Here, we describe recent advances- many by PISCO-in underst...

Despite progressive policies and continued advances in ocean management, numerous shifts associated with global changes have been observed in marine ecosystems in recent years, including warming, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation. As global change accelerates, science is needed to inform evidence-based management strategies for continued ecosy...

As the reality of climate change became obvious during the late 1900s, the need for understanding ecosystem pattern and dynamics at large scales and for long periods became increasingly evident. This realization inspired the genesis of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). PISCO research aimed to quantify intertid...

Ecosystem patterning frequently arises either from environmental heterogeneity or in studies of homogeneous systems where biological feedbacks produce multiple persistent ecological states. However, density dependent changes in behavior can strongly regulate species interactions, raising the question of whether behavior can also affect large-scale...

Clipperton Atoll (Île de La Passion) is the only atoll in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) ecoregion and, owing to its isolation, possesses several endemic species and is likely an important stepping stone between Oceania, the remainder of the TEP, including other oceanic islands and the west coast of Central America. We describe the biodiversity...

We provide the first assessment for a coral reef fish population of a potentially threatened endemic species from a remote and isolated oceanic island. Based on a 3-dimensional (3D) numerical field model of the reef habitat and underwater visual censuses conducted by 2 different teams in February and May 2016, we show that the 3.7 km2 of the Clippe...

Baselines and benchmarks (B&Bs) are needed to evaluate the ecological status and fisheries potential of coral reefs. B&Bs may depend on habitat features and energetic limitations that constrain biomass within the natural variability of the environment and fish behaviors. To evaluate if broad B&Bs exist, we compiled data on the biomass of fishes in...

Shipwrecks can have significant localized effects when grounded on shallow coral reefs. These effects are not limited to the immediate physical damage, but can have wide-spread and lasting impacts due to alteration of the chemical makeup of the surrounding water column. This can subsequently impact the growth of benthic organisms, often leading to...

Historical marine ecology provides information on past ocean conditions and community structure that can inform current conservation and management. In an era of rapid global ocean changes, it is critical that managers and scientists ensure sufficient documentation of past and present conditions of resources they manage or study. Documenting, archi...

Estimating population sizes and genetic diversity are key factors to understand and predict population dynamics. Marine species have been a difficult challenge in that respect, due to the difficulty in assessing population sizes and the open nature of such populations. Small, isolated islands with endemic species offer an opportunity to groundtruth...