Recruitment of Atlantic croaker, Micropogonias undulatus: Do postsettlement processes disrupt or reinforce initial patterns of settlement?*

Understanding the causes of fluctuations in population abundance is critical for ecologists and fishery biologists. For marine fishes with life histories in which adults have limited home ranges and larvae are pelagic and advected vast distances from natal sites, an understanding of variability in larval supply to local populations is critical for understanding the mechanisms that produce dynamics in populations (Caley et al., 1996). In addition, habitat selection by settling fish (Carr, 1991; Levin, 1991; Wellington, 1992; Tolimieri, 1995), and habitat-specific growth and mortality (Heck and Orth, 1980; Hixon and Beets, 1993; Levin et al., 1997) may ultimately reinforce or disrupt patterns created by variable larval supply (Jones, 1997). Thus, knowledge of the degree to which processes such as habitat selection, competition, or predation modify initial patterns of larval settlement is important in understanding the population dynamics of marine species. The importance of variability in postsettlement growth or mortality and the level to which postsettlement Recruitment of Atlantic croaker, Micropogonias undulatus: Do postsettlement processes disrupt or reinforce initial patterns of settlement?*