Sue Lowerre-Barbieri

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Florida

Site fidelity, space use, and dispersal are commonly estimated with acoustic telemetry (AT) to help inform management and conservation. These behaviors can change with age, habitat and environmental conditions and our ability to accurately estimate them is affected by a study’s inference power (design components that affect how accurately detection...

Objective This paper highlights the complexity of marine fish spawner–recruit systems and how they vary across species and ecosystems while providing a universal terminology and framework to evaluate fish reproduction. We emphasize the gonadal development important to assess maturity, fecundity, where and when fish spawn, and transition and sex ass...

Although movement has always played an important role in fisheries science, movement patterns are changing with changing ocean conditions. This affects availability to capture, the spatial scale of needed governance, and our food supply. Technological advances make it possible to track marine fish (and fishermen) in ways not previously possible and...

Data from the Integrated Tracking of Aquatic Animals in the Gulf of Mexico (iTAG) network, and sister networks, were used to evaluate fish movements in the Florida Keys—an extensive reef fish ecosystem just north of Cuba connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. We analysed ~2 million detections for 23 species, ranging from reef fish such a...

A close relationship between adult abundance and stock productivity may not exist for many marine fish stocks, resulting in concern that the management goal of maximum sustainable yield is either inefficient or risky. Although reproductive success is tightly coupled with adult abundance and fecundity in many terrestrial animals, in exploited marine...

The great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) is a highly mobile shark species whose population in the United States declined dramatically through the early 2000s. Their spatial ecology is poorly understood, creating challenges for effective conservation of this enigmatic marine predator. Using acoustic telemetry and network analyses, we describe t...

Numerous reef fishes utilize estuarine nurseries following spawning in marine habitats. Nursery origin affects their life cycle space use, and otolith chemistry can be an effective tool for tracking movement over this lifetime scale. Gag Mycteroperca microlepis occupy West Florida (WF), USA, estuaries as juveniles and have a spatially complex life...

Acoustic telemetry is a popular approach used to track many different aquatic animal taxa in marine and freshwater systems. However, information derived from focal studies is typically resource‐ and geography‐limited by the extent and placement of acoustic receivers. Even so, animals tagged and tracked in one region or study may be detected unexpec...

Individual fish movement patterns and behaviors influence population-level traits, and are important for understanding their ecology and evolution. Understanding these behaviors is key for managing and conserving migratory animal populations, including Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus), that support an economically important recreational fisher...

Geolocating aquatic animals with acoustic tags has been ongoing for decades, relying on the detection of acoustic signals at multiple receivers with known positions to calculate a 2D or 3D position, and ultimately recreate the path of an aquatic animal from detections at fixed stations. This method of underwater geolocation is evolving with new sof...

Understanding the processes that drive reproductive success in marine fish stocks is critical to effective fisheries management. These processes can be difficult to investigate, especially in age‐structured populations, because they occur at transgenerational scales. Reproductive success is often attributed to a small portion of the adult populatio...

Geopolitical fishery management boundaries are often misaligned with the ecological population structure of marine species, which presents challenges for assessment and management of these species. Red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, is an iconic and heavily exploited species in both the US Gulf of Mexico and off the southeastern US Atlantic coast a...

This study investigated the potential effects of red tide events (blooms of the toxin-producing dinoflagellate, Karenia brevis) on Atlantic tarpon (Megalops atlanticus), a long-lived migratory game fish, along the southwestern coast of Florida. In this region, red tides have long been associated with mass mortality events of marine organisms and ot...

Theoretical, field-based, and experimental research all suggest that animal populations remain relatively stable under increasing habitat alteration until a critical threshold is reached, after which small changes to habitats result in large negative responses. However, there are few empirical examples demonstrating this in marine fishes, making id...

Efforts to manage small and medium-sized pelagic fishes (SMPF) using traditional stock assessment methods are hampered by the elusive relationship between spawning stock biomass and recruitment. We propose to compute a reproductive resilience index (RRI) in three steps: (i) we selected 16 biological traits related to distinct aspects of SMPF reprod...

Interspecific interactions can play an essential role in shaping wildlife populations and communities. To date, assessments of interspecific interactions, and more specifically predator–prey dynamics, in aquatic systems over broad spatial and temporal scales (i.e., hundreds of kilometers and multiple years) are rare due to constraints on our abilit...

Environmental pressures can influence recruitment of estuarine fishes by impacting growth and survival of juveniles as well as adult habitat use and behavior. Identifying potential drivers of year‐class strength is an important tool for assessing stock health and implementing management decisions. The goal of this study was to determine how environ...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/Y2ZSTJNU8YYG2WANCSNF?target=10.1002/aqc.3777 Incidental catch of marine species can create ecological and economic issues, particularly for endangered species. The smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) is endemic to the Atlantic Ocean and listed as Endangered in the US Endangered Species Act. One of it...

Acoustic telemetry (AT) is a rapidly evolving technique used to track the movements of aquatic animals. As the capacity of AT research expands it is important to optimize its relevance to management while still pursuing key ecological questions. A global review of AT literature revealed region-specific research priorities underscoring the breadth o...

The vulnerability of a fish stock to becoming overfished is dependent upon biological traits that influence productivity and external factors that determine susceptibility or exposure to fishing effort. While a suite of life history traits are traditionally incorporated into management efforts due to their direct association with vulnerability to o...

The vulnerability of fish to fishing depends on a range of life-history (e.g. growth; reproduction), behavioural (e.g. boldness) and physiological (e.g. metabolic rates) traits which are usually correlated with reproductive success. Therefore, between-fish differences in catchability may be indirectly affecting the reproductive potential at the pop...

Marine fish movement plays a critical role in ecosystem functioning and is increasingly studied with acoustic telemetry. Traditionally, this research has focused on single species and small spatial scales. However, integrated tracking networks, such as the Integrated Tracking of Aquatic Animals in the Gulf of Mexico (iTAG) network, are building the...

Marine fish movement plays a critical role in ecosystem functioning and is increasingly studied with acoustic telemetry. Traditionally, this research has focused on single species and small spatial scales. However, integrated tracking networks, such as the Integrated Tracking of Aquatic Animals in the Gulf of Mexico (iTAG) network, are building the...

Basic distribution and movements of elasmobranch species, particularly mesopredatory rays, remain relatively unknown. This is especially true for the whitespotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari), a protected species in Florida with poorly described migratory and habitat use patterns. Passive acoustic telemetry was used to reveal multi-scale spatial...

The smalltooth sawfish Pristis pectinata is an endangered species endemic to the Atlantic Ocean. The only known viable populations occur in the USA along both coasts of Florida and in the western Bahamas. Little is known about habitat use and movement ecology of large juvenile and adult smalltooth sawfish. Although Critical Habitat—a management des...

Atlantic tarpon Megalops atlanticus are important mesopredators in the western Atlantic Ocean, and the focus of a popular recreational fishery that targets them throughout their annual migration in the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern USA. Using 4 years of acoustic telemetry data, we quantified the seasonal variation in phenology of arrival and depa...

We tested whether Δ¹⁴C values of eye lens protein (crystallin) formed in early life could be utilized to validate marine bony fish age estimates via the bomb radiocarbon chronometer. The slope of the relationship between red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus; n = 8; 0 to 27 years old), otolith and eye lens core Δ¹⁴C values was not significantly differe...

Information on ecological systems often comes from diverse sources with varied levels of complexity, bias, and uncertainty. Accordingly, analytical techniques continue to evolve that address these challenges to reveal the characteristics of ecological systems and inform conservation actions. We applied multiple statistical learning algorithms (i.e....

Gag grouper Mycteroperca microlepis are protogynous hermaphrodites, for which the assumption of female-driven reproductive potential may be inaccurate. In protogynous species, male abundance, fertilization success, and stock productivity are affected by where and when sex change occurs and how fishing pressure affects male recruitment and survivors...

We used acoustic telemetry to quantify permit Trachinotus falcatus habitat use and connectivity in proximity to the Florida Keys, USA, and assessed these patterns relative to current habitat and fisheries management practices. From March 2017 to June 2018, 45 permit tagged within 16 km of the lower Florida Keys were detected at stationary acoustic...

Many species of inshore, coastal, and reef fishes in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) aggregate to spawn at specific sites and times. These fish spawning aggregations (FSAs) can be highly vulnerable to concentrated fishing pressure, which can have detrimental effects on entire stocks and ecosystems. There has been only limited research and management...

Migration is a widespread but highly diverse component of many animal life histories. Fish migrate throughout the world's oceans, within lakes and rivers, and between the two realms, transporting matter, energy, and other species (e.g., microbes) across boundaries. Migration is therefore a process responsible for myriad ecosystem services. Many hum...

An understanding of individual variability in spatio-temporal spawning behavior is important to understand productivity and inform stock assessments and management actions. Spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus, popular both with recreational anglers and researchers due to their accessibility and catchability, have frequently been the subject of rep...

The Chesapeake Bay spawning population of striped bass, Morone saxatilis (Walbaum, 1792), is the principal contributor of juveniles to the coastal Atlantic population, but a thorough reproductive study has not been conducted since the early 1990s, prompting questions about temporal changes and stock density - related impacts on reproduction. Additi...

Many marine fish form spawning aggregations (FSAs) and exhibit meta-population stock structure, affecting reproductive resilience and the optimal spatial scale of management. Red drum use a known FSA site off Tampa Bay (TB FSA site) and another presumed FSA site off Charlotte Harbor (CH FSA site). We studied these sites for 3 years (2012–2014) to a...

Marine resource management is shifting from optimizing single species yield to redefining sustainable fisheries within the context of managing ocean use and ecosystem health. In this introductory article to the theme set, "Plugging spatial ecology into ecosystem-based management (EBM)" we conduct an informal horizon scan with leaders in EBM researc...

ABSTRACT: Although stock structure is based on reproductive isolation and recruitment to the adult stock is an important parameter for stock assessments, data on the ecological process as individuals move from nursery to adult habitat is rare. As red drum Sciaenops ocellatus show delineated estuarine nursery grounds and coastal spawning habitat, we...

Acoustic telemetry is a powerful tool for investigating the movement ecology of aquatic animals. As the number of studies using passive acoustic telemetry technology has grown in recent years, so has membership in regional collaborative networks in which methodologies and detection data are shared among researchers. These networks can significantly...

Spatial and temporal patterns of spawning activity are important measures of resilience in fishes that directly link environmental disturbances with reproductive success. We acoustically monitored spawning in spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) from April through September 2017 at 15 sites near Port Aransas, Texas, which coincided with the landf...

Autonomous platforms and vehicles are a growing component of the ocean research fleet, producing data sets crucial to our understanding of oceanographic and fishery ecosystem processes. One emerging tool for making these measurements is underwater gliders that autonomously sample the water column for weeks to months at a time. Although originally d...

Nurse sharks have not previously been known to migrate. Nurse sharks of the Dry Tortugas (DRTO) mating population have a highly predictable periodic residency cycle, returning to the Dry Tortugas Courtship and Mating Ground (DTCMG) annually (males) or bi- to triennially (females) during the June/July mating season. For 23 years we have followed the...

Sexual dimorphism occurs in many fishes and is expressed in a range of traits, including growth and reproductive effort. These traits can result in sex-specific fishing mortality in a size-selective fishery. Our goal was to understand the trade-offs between growth, mortality, and reproduction, for a species with sexually dimorphic growth, within a...

Only with new technology and the ability to simulate systems are we beginning to understand fish reproductive processes at the individual scale over time. Traditionally, oocyte recruitment and fecundity type in fishes have been based on a “snap-shot” approach, i.e., a histological micrograph and/or oocyte size frequency distribution of a spawning c...

Many species that provide productive marine fisheries form spawning aggregations. Aggregations are predictable both in time and space and constitute nearly all of the reproductive activity for these species. For species that spend weeks to months on spawning aggregation sites, individuals may need to rely on a forage base at or near the spawning si...

This paper reviews the use of acoustic telemetry as a tool for addressing issues in fisheries management, and serves as the lead to the special Feature Issue of Ecological Applications titled Acoustic Telemetry and Fisheries Management. Specifically, we provide an overview of the ways in which acoustic telemetry can be used to inform issues central...

Managed reef fish in the Atlantic Ocean of the southeastern United States (SEUS) support a multi-billion dollar industry. There is a broad interest in locating and protecting spawning fish from harvest, to enhance productivity and reduce the potential for overfishing. We assessed spatiotemporal cues for spawning for six species from four reef fish...

Supporting references for Table 6 spawning seasons. (DOCX)

Plots of regression model parameter estimates from Table 7. (DOCX)

Probability of encountering a spawning condition female Gray Triggerfish. Predicted mean (left) and standard error (right) probabilities of observing spawning condition female at time and conditions of peak spawning, relative to external validation collections (+). Raster color-coding based on 1.5 standard deviations from the mean. Green boxes indi...

Probability of encountering a spawning condition female Scamp. Predicted mean (left) and standard error (right) probabilities of observing spawning condition female at time and conditions of peak spawning, relative to external validation collections (+). Raster color-coding based on 1.5 standard deviations from the mean. Green boxes indicate no-tak...

Probability of encountering a spawning condition female White Grunt. Predicted mean (left) and standard error (right) probabilities of observing spawning condition female at time and conditions of peak spawning, relative to external validation collections (+). Raster color-coding based on 1.5 standard deviations from the mean. Green boxes indicate...

Spawning site selection and reproductive timing affect stock productivity and structure in marine fishes but are poorly understood. Traditionally, stock assessments measure reproductive potential as spawning stock biomass or egg production and do not include other aspects of reproductive behavior. Red drum make an excellent case study to assess the...

Spawning site selection and reproductive timing affect stock productivity and structure in marine fishes but are poorly understood. Traditionally, stock assessments measure reproductive potential as spawning stock biomass or egg production and do not include other aspects of reproductive behavior. Red drum make an excellent case study to assess the...

The tagging and tracking of aquatic animals using acoustic telemetry hardware has traditionally been the purview of individual researchers that specialize in single species. Concerns over data privacy and unauthorized use of receiver arrays have prevented the construction of large-scale, multi-species, multi-institution, multi-researcher collaborat...

Although harmful algal blooms (HABs) are known to cause morbidity and mortality in marine organisms, their sublethal effects are poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to compare ambient noise levels during a severe HAB event in Tampa Bay, Florida, to those during non-HAB periods. Passive acoustic monitoring was conducted using bottom-mou...

We developed a conceptual model of reproductive resilience based on spatio-temporal diversity in spawning activity and the ‘big old fat fecund female fish’ effect, i.e., trends in reproductive traits with size and age. We chose red snapper Lutjanus campechanus as our case study, as this species is highly fecund, currently overfished, and long-lived...

Food web relationships are traditionally defined in terms of the flow of key elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, and their role in limiting production. There is growing recognition that availability of important biomolecules, such as fatty acids, may exert controls on secondary production that are not easily explained by traditional...

Catchability, a key parameter in stock assessment, is often considered constant in time and space. However, when fishing with passive gears like traps or gillnets, fish behavior determines the odds of encounter with the fishers and thus catchability. Few studies have presented comprehensive empirical evidence of the link between behavior measured i...

The present chapter deals with the estimation of female fecundity in fishes, mostly teleosts. The chapter is organized in three main blocks. The first block is devoted to technical issues of fish fecundity measurements from fixation, preservation and treatment of ovarian material to automatic oocyte counts. The use of certain staining protocols for...

The impact of exogenous factors on larval survival, in conjunction with the large fecundities of most exploited marine species, have led some to conclude that there is often little relationship between reproductive rate and reproductive success at the population level. However, there is a need to distinguish between yield, which is usually well-cor...

Landscape genetic analysis of population connectivity has revealed that spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) typically complete their life cycles within geographically-restricted ranges. For members of spotted seatrout populations along the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the mean estimate of individual (lifetime) dispersal distance does not exceed 100 k...

Connectivity between larval and adult phases has largely focused on demersal teleost fishes and how movement occurs over long distances. Although smaller in scale, spatial partitioning of maturity stages in estuarine fish is important in linking ontogenetic habitat transitions with potential strategies for maximizing fitness. Three estuarine sciaen...

Electronic tags have enabled scientists to describe fish movements, habitat usage and migration patterns. However, the high cost of these tags limits the number that can be deployed. We consider what could be done if technological improvements and the production of tags with fewer features allowed large numbers of smaller tags with longer battery l...

Johan Hjort’s idea that survival during early life controls year-class strength transformed fishery science in the 20th century, when management was based on populations. Ensuing research focused on the small percentage offspring that survive - 10% of eggs and 1% through the larval period. Fishery management in the 21st century has moved toward an...

Reproductive behavior affects spatial population structure and our ability to manage for sustainability in marine and diadromous fishes. In this study, we used fishery independent capture-based sampling to evaluate where Common Snook occurred in Tampa Bay and if it changed with spawning season, and passive acoustic telemetry to assess fine scale be...

The parasitic nematode Philometra floridensis infects the ovary of its only host, the economically important fish species Sciaenops ocellatus, but the factors influencing host susceptibility and potential pathogenic effects are unknown. Here we report new information on these topics from evaluations of infected and uninfected hosts collected from t...

The present chapter deals with the estimation of female fecundity in fishes, mostly teleosts. The chapter is organized in three main blocks. The first block is devoted to technical issues of fish fecundity measurements from fixation, preservation and treatment of ovarian material to automatic oocyte counts. The use of certain staining protocols for...

Older and larger marine teleosts with indeterminate fecundity can produce the majority of eggs in a population through increased batch fecundity and extended spawning seasons. Maintaining these females in the spawning population has been hypothesized to increase resilience. Two studies (1996-98 and 2006-09) targeting spawning aggregations of adult...

The red drum Sciaenops ocellatus supports one of the largest and most popular fisheries in the southeastern United States. In the last federal assessment (yr 2000), the Gulf of Mexico stock was classified as “overfished”. However, the assessment was limited, in large part, by the lack of data for the offshore adult population. The data gap has rema...

Advances in our understanding of effective breeding populations, spatial dynamics, and the role of spawning population age structure are changing how we assess productivity in marine fishes. Red drum spawning populations off Southwest Florida have been sampled in 1996-1998, 2006-2009, and in an on-going study started in 2012. In the ten year period...

We studied multiple individual parameters that affect the reproductive output in the painted comber Serranus scriba, a simultaneous hermaphroditic fish that is widely exploited by recreational fishing in temperate marine coastal regions. Batch fecundity was significantly affected by maternal size, but was not related to maternal age or condition. H...

Variability in individual lifetime reproductive success is known to have important consequences for population dynamics, yet it is often poorly understood in marine fishes. We evaluated spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus spawning site fidelity and reproductive timing at both the population and individual level at a resident spawning aggregation s...

A passive acoustic survey using a random stratified design detected spawning aggregations of sand seatrout Cynoscion arenarius over 2 sequential spawning seasons (2004 and 2005) in Tampa Bay, Florida. In 2005, an intense Karenia brevis red tide at ichthyotoxic concentrations entered Tampa Bay 3 mo after the spawning season began. The bloom persiste...

We studied multiple individual parameters that affect the reproductive output in the painted comber Serranus scriba, a simultaneous hermaphroditic fish that is widely exploited by recreational fishing in temperate marine coastal regions. Batch fecundity was significantly affected by maternal size, but was not related to maternal age or condition. H...

ABSTRACT: Despite its small size, the pearly razorfish Xyrichtys novacula (Linnaeus, 1758) supports important targeted recreational and commercial fisheries. Here, we present the first data on the movements of this species obtained using acoustic telemetry in a temperate marine protected area (MPA). The results demonstrate that acoustic telemetry i...

ABSTRACT: Despite its small size, the pearly razorfish Xyrichtys novacula (Linnaeus, 1758) supports important targeted recreational and commercial fisheries. Here, we present the first data on the movements of this species obtained using acoustic telemetry in a temperate marine protected area (MPA). The results demonstrate that acoustic telemetry i...

Reproductive timing can be defined as the temporal pattern of reproduction over a lifetime. Although reproductive timing is highly variable in marine fishes, certain traits are universal, including sexual maturity, undergoing one or more reproductive cycles, participating in one or more spawning events within a reproductive cycle, release of eggs o...

Although incorporating detailed reproductive data into all stock assessments is not a practical goal, the need to understand how reproductive biology affects population productivity is being increasingly recognized. More research focused on reproductive biology—coupled with a shift towards a resilience perspective in fisheries science—is resulting...

We used an individual-based Monte Carlo simulation model to assess how aspects associated with multiple spawning (within a spawning season) affected survivorship, lifetime fecundity, cohort egg production, and yield-per-recruit of a highly exploited species. To make our model more realistic, we included and tested the effects of individual variabil...