Frontiers in marine movement ecology: mechanisms and consequences of migration and dispersal in marine habitats.

Editorial Cite this article: Walther BD, Munguia P, Fuiman LA. 2015 Frontiers in marine movement ecology: mechanisms and consequences of migration and dispersal in marine habitats. Dispersal and migration are important ecological processes that influence rates of propagule exchange, colonization, extinction and speciation for a wide array of taxa in terrestrial and aquatic systems. The role of movement patterns in the marine environment is particularly critical, because a majority of marine species have a mobile phase at some stage of their life history. Indeed, seminal works that lay the foundation of modern ecology as a science recognized the importance of mobility—whether driven by currents or by swimming—to the dynamics of marine communities. The origins of movement ecology can be traced to the HMS Challenger expedition (1872–1876) led by Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, which was the first scientific survey of the world's oceans. Thomson [1] hypothesized that high dispersal abilities of benthic organisms played a role in homogenizing deep sea communities given that 'most marine animals pass a longer or shorter period of their lives as minute free-swimming larvae, and while in that condition are borne along and scattered by tides and currents.' (p. 39). This perspective persisted, such as in the pioneering 1914 work by Johan Hjort [2] on factors that drive population fluctuations of commercially important fishes. Prior to Hjort's work, the prevailing theory was that temporal variations in fishery yields were driven primarily by adult migrations, but Hjort's careful analyses indicated that year-class strengths were, instead, defined by survival through an early life-history 'critical period', with survival being dependent in part on larval dispersal [3]. These hypotheses have been altered, expanded, debated, supported and refuted by subsequent generations of marine ecologists. Indeed, regarding larval dispersal, Hjort [2] himself noted, 'It would be especially desirable to determine the extent of such movement. .. ' (p. 206), and this desire has continued throughout the subsequent century. Paradigms about the role of movement and its relative importance at different ontogenetic stages have shifted during recent decades. For example, marine ecology in the 1980s was dominated by 'supply side' theory, focusing on the notion that marine populations were limited by recruitment [4], which inspired debates about whether such processes were dependent or independent of population density [5]. The idea that marine populations were well mixed on large spatial scales and therefore fundamentally 'open' with respect to dispersal and recruitment began to change …