Marine protected areas (MPAs) are essential tools for protecting marine ecosystems; yet, their effectiveness varies across regions. In the Caribbean, home to some of the world’s most degraded reefs, evaluating MPA performance requires consistent ecological data and information on management practices. To address this, we conducted standardised reef fish surveys of small (< 20 cm) and large (≥ 20 cm) fish across 83 sites in ten...

Predators regulate communities through top‐down control in many ecosystems. Because most studies of top‐down control last less than a year and focus on only a subset of the community, they may miss predator effects that manifest at longer timescales or across whole food webs. In southeastern US salt marshes, short‐term and small‐scale experiments indicate that nektonic predators (e.g., blue crab, fish, terrapins) facilitate th...

Beverton & Holt's (1957) functional definition of maturity in fish ( L 50 ), as being the size class in which 50% of individuals begin producing gametes in some proportion to body weight, is widely used in assessment models to estimate spawning stock biomass, and manage the minimum size of capture. Standardized histological techniques for estimating L 50 apply physiological definitions that identify cellular or hormonal marker...