Implications of 'supply-side' ecology for environmental assessment and management.

Recent work in marine ecology has reaffirmed an insight from fisheries science that knowledge about the production, dissemination and success of propagules can guide our management of populations and assemblages. Understanding the variable nature of recruitment relationships can both aid and hinder attempts at environmental monitoring, rehabilitation and innovative selection of marine reserves. The effects of human impacts in marine environments may be first manifest in alterations to recruitment, which also constitutes the only path by which many populations could recover.