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Science 5 March 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5407, pp. 1528 - 1530
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5407.1528
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Reports

Episodic Fluctuations in Larval Supply

Paul A. Dixon, 1* Maria J. Milicich, 2dagger George Sugihara 1

The lack of a clear relationship between spawning output and recruitment success continues to confound attempts to understand and manage temporally variable fish populations. This relationship for a common reef fish is shown to be obscured by nonlinear processes in operation during the larval phase. Nonlinear responses of larval fish to their noisy physical environment may offer a general explanation for the erratic, often episodic, replenishment of open marine populations.

1 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
2 Griffith University, Nathan Brisbane, Australia.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: paul{at}complex.ucsd.edu

dagger    Present address: M2 Environmental Ltd., 3D #24, Tung, Shan Terrace, Happy Valley, Hong Kong.

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