How might recruitment research on coral-reef fishes help manage tropical reef fisheries?

'Ecologic' reef fishes (basic research subjects) and `Economic' reeffishes (exploited by humans) share fundamental early life-history attributes of small, widely dispersed planktonic eggs, larvae, and (forsome species in both groups) pelagic juveniles. These attributes predispose the open populations of species in both groups to limitation resulting from environmentally induced fluctuations in recruitment from planktonic/pelagic to benthic stages. Rates of movement within andamong reefs, one of several postrecruitment processes likely to be subject to density-dependent regulation, may differ between Ecologics (mostly small-bodied) and Economics (generally larger-bodied). This is because of differences between species in the two groups in size-related differences in the home ranges of individuals. Existing data, however, neither support the notion that natural growth and mortality rates basically differ between the adults of Ecological and Economic species, nor that the generally larger home ranges of larger-bodied adult Economics are more subject to density-dependent control. Further, the small-bodied young-of-year juveniles of both groups on average probably have similar growth and mortality rates and small individualhome ranges that are equivalently affected by density dependence. Inconclusion I argue that, because of fundamental similarities in the sizes and durations of planktonic propagules and spawning periodicities, certain Ecologics and Economics may comprise a single recruitmentguild. Coefficients of growth and mortality for postsettlement Ecologics also may resemble, and be applied as preliminary proxies for, analogous coefficients for Economic species. The efficacy of managementstrategies such as harvest refugia may differ for Ecological and Economic species, however, depending on whether the refugia are used to counter growth or recruitment overfishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]