DOI: 10.5061/dryad.v2g567n
title: Data from: Demographic plasticity facilitates ecological and economic resilience in a commercially important reef fish

description: 1. Variation in life-history characteristics is evident within and across
 animal populations. Such variation is mediated by environmental gradients
 and reflects metabolic constraints or trade-offs that enhance reproductive
 outputs. While generalizations of life-history relationships across
 species provide a framework for predicting vulnerability to
 overexploitation, deciphering patterns of intraspecific variation may also
 enable recognition of peculiar features of populations that facilitate
 ecological resilience. 2. This study combines age-based biological data
 from geographically disparate populations of bluespine unicornfish (Naso
 unicornis)—the most commercially-valuable reef-associated species in the
 insular Indo-Pacific—to explore the magnitude and drivers of variation in
 life span and examine the mechanisms enabling peculiar mortality
 schedules. 3. Longevity and mortality schedules were investigated across
 eleven locations encompassing a range of latitudes and exploitation
 levels. The presence of different growth types was examined using
 back-calculated growth histories from otoliths. Growth-type dependent
 mortality (mortality rates associated with particular growth trajectories)
 was corroborated using population models that incorporated size-dependent
 competition. 4. We found a threefold geographic variation in life span
 that was strongly linked to temperature, but not to anthropogenic pressure
 or ocean productivity. All populations consistently displayed a two-phase
 mortality schedule, with higher than expected natural mortality rates in
 earlier stages of post-settlement life. Reconstructed growth histories and
 population models demonstrated that variable growth types within
 populations can yield this peculiar biphasic mortality schedule, where
 fast growers enjoy early reproductive outputs at the expense of greater
 mortality, and benefits for slow growers derive from extended reproductive
 outputs over a greater number of annual cycles. This promotes population
 resilience because individuals can take advantage of cycles of
 environmental change operating at both short and long-term scales. 5. Our
 results highlight a prevailing, fundamental misperception when comparing
 the life histories of long-lived tropical ectotherms: the seemingly
 incongruent combination of extended life spans with high mortality rates
 was enabled by coexistence of variable growth types in a population. Thus
 a demographic profile incorporating contrasting growth and mortality
 strategies obscures the demographic effects of harvest across space or
 time in N. unicornis and possibly other ectotherms with the combination of
 longevity and asymptotic growth.
description: Data from: Demographic
 plasticity facilitates ecological and economic resilience in a
 commercially important reef fishThis data is associated
 with the Journal of Animal Ecology publication detailing age-based
 life-history characteristics of the bluespine unicornfish Naso unicornis
 across eleven populations spanning the Indo-Pacific. It contains age, sex,
 body size, and reproductive information for over 2500 specimens from the
 eleven locations, as well as increment width summaries for over 100
 specimens from four locations.Taylor_etal_JAE_DATA.xlsx