Aharon G. Fleury

International conservation goals have driven rapid expansion of protected areas. This growth has favored quantity over quality, and often results in residual reserves (i.e., areas where species already experience minimal anthropogenic impact). Spatial prioritization is commonly used to help design protected area networks that represent species while minimizing costs to stakeholders. This approach can result in the siting of protected areas that do not decrease impacts on species of conservation concern. Here, we show how measures of cumulative impacts on species can be used in a spatial prioritization to site protected areas to reduce impacts on species of conservation concern. We use a trait-based vulnerability framework and anthropogenic stressor maps to quantify cumulative impacts from four human activities, and incorporate those impacts into spatial prioritizations. We demonstrate that the inclusion of cumulative impacts on species in spatial prioritization can more efficiently protect biodiversity, balance socioeconomic objectives, and avoid residual reserve outcomes.

Anthropogenic pressures threaten biodiversity, necessitating conservation actions founded on robust ecological models. However, prevailing models inadequately capture the spatiotemporal variation in environmental pressures faced by species with high mobility or complex life histories, as data are often aggregated across species’ life histories or spatial distributions. We highlight the limitations of static models for dynamic species and incorporate life history variation and spatial distributions for species and stressors into a trait-based vulnerability and impact model. We use green sea turtles in the Greater Caribbean Region to demonstrate how vulnerability and anthropogenic impact for a dynamic species change across four life stages. By incorporating life stages into a trait-based vulnerability model, we observed life stage-specific vulnerabilities that were otherwise unnoticed when using an aggregated trait value set. Early life stages were more vulnerable to some stressors, such as inorganic pollution or marine heat waves, and less vulnerable to others, such as bycatch. Incorporating spatial distributions of stressors and life stages revealed impacts differ for each life stage across spatial areas, emphasizing the importance of stage-specific conservation measures. Our approach showcases the importance of incorporating dynamic processes into ecological models and will enable better and more targeted conservation actions for species with complex life histories and high mobility.

The reproductive biology of Pacific hagfish Eptatretus stoutii (Lockington, 1878) and black hagfish Eptatretus deani (Evermann & Goldsborough, 1907) was assessed using current and historical data. Our results found that the reproductive characteristics of both hagfish species reflect those of K‐selected species, which tend to live long and exhibit slow growth rates, low fecundity (approximately 20 eggs per female) and late maturity. Additionally, females of both species commence maturation prior to males. This study provides a population profile for both species of hagfish, but further assessments are needed to effectively manage a sustainable hagfish fishery.