The socioeconomic and environmental niche of protected areas reveals global conservation gaps and opportunities.

The global network of protected areas has rapidly expanded in the past decade and is expected to cover at least 30% of land and sea by 2030 to halt biodiversity erosion. Yet, the distribution of protected areas is highly heterogeneous on Earth and the social-environmental preconditions enabling or hindering protected area establishment remain poorly understood. Here, using fourteen socioeconomic and environmental factors, we characterize the multidimensional niche of terrestrial and marine protected areas, which we use to accurately establish, at the global scale, whether a particular location has preconditions favourable for paestablishment.

Divergent responses of pelagic and benthic fish body-size structure to remoteness and protection from humans.

Animal body-size variation influences multiple processes in marine ecosystems, but habitat heterogeneity has prevented a comprehensive assessment of size across pelagic (midwater) and benthic (seabed) systems along anthropic gradients. In this work, we derive fish size indicators from 17,411 stereo baited-video deployments to test for differences between pelagic and benthic responses to remoteness from human pressures and effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs). From records of 823,849 individual fish, we report divergent responses between systems, with pelagic size structure more profoundly eroded near human markets than benthic size structure, signifying greater vulnerability of pelagic systems to human pressure.

Changes in illegal fishing dynamics in a large-scale MPA during COVID-19.

Global socio-ecological shocks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can threaten progress in protecting vulnerable marine environments by altering behaviour of resource users. When government priorities shift from environmental protection towards safeguarding human populations, control of illegal activity in protected areas can alter. Resulting increases in illegal fishing in large-scale marine protected areas (MPAs) are of particular concern as they contain a large proportion of marine protected area globally.

How many replicates to accurately estimate fish biodiversity using environmental DNA on coral reefs?

Quantifying fish species diversity in rich tropical marine environments remains challenging. Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is a promising tool to face this challenge through the filtering, amplification, and sequencing of DNA traces from water samples. However, because eDNA concentration is low in marine environments, the reliability of eDNA to detect species diversity can be limited.

Use of environmental DNA in assessment of fish functional and phylogenetic diversity.

Assessing the impact of global changes and protection effectiveness is a key step in monitoring marine fishes. Most traditional census methods are demanding or destructive. Nondisturbing and nonlethal approaches based on video and environmental DNA are alternatives to underwater visual census or fishing.

Detection of the elusive Dwarf sperm whale () using environmental DNA at Malpelo island (Eastern Pacific, Colombia).

Monitoring large marine mammals is challenging due to their low abundances in general, an ability to move over large distances and wide geographical range sizes.The distribution of the pygmy () and dwarf () sperm whales is informed by relatively rare sightings, which does not permit accurate estimates of their distribution ranges. Hence, their conservation status has long remained Data Deficient (DD) in the Red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which prevent appropriate conservation measures.

Climate oscillation and the invasion of alien species influence the oceanic distribution of seabirds.

Spatial and temporal distribution of seabird transiting and foraging at sea is an important consideration for marine conservation planning. Using at-sea observations of seabirds ( = 317), collected during the breeding season from 2012 to 2016, we built boosted regression tree (BRT) models to identify relationships between numerically dominant seabird species (red-footed booby, brown noddy, white tern, and wedge-tailed shearwater), geomorphology, oceanographic variability, and climate oscillation in the Chagos Archipelago. We documented positive relationships between red-footed booby and wedge-tailed shearwater abundance with the strength in the Indian Ocean Dipole, as represented by the Dipole Mode Index (6.

Correction: Remote reefs and seamounts are the last refuges for marine predators across the Indo-Pacific.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.

Remote reefs and seamounts are the last refuges for marine predators across the Indo-Pacific.

Since the 1950s, industrial fisheries have expanded globally, as fishing vessels are required to travel further afield for fishing opportunities. Technological advancements and fishery subsidies have granted ever-increasing access to populations of sharks, tunas, billfishes, and other predators. Wilderness refuges, defined here as areas beyond the detectable range of human influence, are therefore increasingly rare.

Isolation and no-entry marine reserves mitigate anthropogenic impacts on grey reef shark behavior.

Reef sharks are vulnerable predators experiencing severe population declines mainly due to overexploitation. However, beyond direct exploitation, human activities can produce indirect or sub-lethal effects such as behavioral alterations. Such alterations are well known for terrestrial fauna but poorly documented for marine species.

Correction: Drivers of abundance and spatial distribution of reef-associated sharks in an isolated atoll reef system.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Drivers of abundance and spatial distribution of reef-associated sharks in an isolated atoll reef system.

We investigated drivers of reef shark demography across a large and isolated marine protected area, the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Reserve, using stereo baited remote underwater video systems. We modelled shark abundance against biotic and abiotic variables at 35 sites across the reserve and found that the biomass of low trophic order fish (specifically planktivores) had the greatest effect on shark abundance, although models also included habitat variables (depth, coral cover and site type). There was significant variation in the composition of the shark assemblage at different atolls within the reserve.

Sampling mobile oceanic fishes and sharks: implications for fisheries and conservation planning.

Tuna, billfish, and oceanic sharks [hereafter referred to as 'mobile oceanic fishes and sharks' (MOFS)] are characterised by conservative life-history strategies and highly migratory behaviour across large, transnational ranges. Intense exploitation over the past 65 years by a rapidly expanding high-seas fishing fleet has left many populations depleted, with consequences at the ecosystem level due to top-down control and trophic cascades. Despite increases in both CITES and IUCN Red Listings, the demographic trajectories of oceanic sharks and billfish are poorly quantified and resolved at geographic and population levels.

Topographic determinants of mobile vertebrate predator hotspots: current knowledge and future directions.

Despite being identified as a driver of mobile predator aggregations (hotspots) in both marine and terrestrial environments, topographic complexity has long remained a challenging concept for scientists to visualise and a difficult parameter to estimate. It is only with the advent of high-speed computers and the recent popularisation of geographical information systems (GIS) that terrain attributes have begun to be quantitatively measured in three-dimensional space and related to wildlife dynamics, making the well-established field of geomorphometry (or 'digital terrain modelling') a discipline of growing appeal to biologists. Although a diverse array of numerical metrics is now available to describe the shape, geometry and physical properties of natural habitats, few of these are known to, or adequately used by, ecologists.

Does presence of a mid-ocean ridge enhance biomass and biodiversity?

In contrast to generally sparse biological communities in open-ocean settings, seamounts and ridges are perceived as areas of elevated productivity and biodiversity capable of supporting commercial fisheries. We investigated the origin of this apparent biological enhancement over a segment of the North Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) using sonar, corers, trawls, traps, and a remotely operated vehicle to survey habitat, biomass, and biodiversity. Satellite remote sensing provided information on flow patterns, thermal fronts, and primary production, while sediment traps measured export flux during 2007-2010.