Résumé: Terrestrial plants seeds, spores and pollen are often dispersed by wind. Likewise, most eggs and larvae of marine organisms are dispersed by oceanic currents. It was historically believed that the spatial scale at which dispersal occurs was orders of magnitude smaller for plants than for fish. However, recent empirical estimates of seed and larval dispersal suggest that these dispersal scales are more alike than previously thought. The modeling approaches used to simulate aerial and aquatic dispersal are also converging. Similar biophysical models are developed, in which outputs of Eulerian models simulating the main physical forcing mechanism (wind or currents) are used as inputs to Lagrangian models that include biological components (such as seed terminal velocity or larval vertical migration). These biophysical models are then used to simulate trajectories of the biological entities (seeds, larvae) in three dimensions. We reflect on these converging trends by first putting them into an historical perspective, and then by comparing the physical and biological processes represented in marine larva vs. terrestrial seed dispersal models, the data used for the models output corroboration, and the tools available to perform simulations. We conclude that this convergence offers the opportunity to bridge the gap between two scientific communities which are currently largely disconnected. More broadly, we also see our comparison across systems as a useful way to strengthen the links between aquatic and terrestrial ecology by sharing knowledge, methods, tools, and concepts.

Résumé: Marine reserves are viewed as flagship tools to protect exploited species and to contribute to the effective management of coastal fisheries. Yet, the extent to which marine reserves are globally interconnected and able to effectively seed areas, where fisheries are most critical for food and livelihood security is largely unknown. Using a hydrodynamic model of larval dispersal, we predict that most marine reserves are not interconnected by currents and that their potential benefits to fishing areas are presently limited, since countries with high dependency on coastal fisheries receive very little larval supply from marine reserves. This global mismatch could be reversed, however, by placing new marine reserves in areas sufficiently remote to minimize social and economic costs but sufficiently connected through sea currents to seed the most exploited fisheries and endangered ecosystems.

Résumé: Current methods in conservation planning for promoting the persistence of biodiversity typically focus on either representing species geographic distributions or maintaining connectivity between reserves, but rarely both, and take a focal species, rather than a multispecies, approach. Here, we link prioritization methods with population models to explore the impact of integrating both representation and connectivity into conservation planning for species persistence. Using data on 288 Mediterranean fish species with varying conservation requirements, we show that: (1) considering both representation and connectivity objectives provides the best strategy for enhanced biodiversity persistence and (2) connectivity objectives were fundamental to enhancing persistence of small-ranged species, which are most in need of conservation, while the representation objective benefited only wide-ranging species. Our approach provides a more comprehensive appraisal of planning applications than approaches focusing on either representation or connectivity, and will hopefully contribute to build more effective reserve networks for the persistence of biodiversity.