Alan Friedlander

My major research areas of interest are coral reef community ecology, fisheries science, marine conservation biology, and traditional marine resource use and management. I have been examining population regulation in marine fishes throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago, the Caribbean, and the wider Indo-Pacific region, with particular emphasis on responses to exploitation, disturbance, and habitat quality. One of my current major research efforts involves the development of biogeographic approaches to integrate information on the distribution of habitats and associated species to characterize species affinities, define biologically relevant marine protected area (MPA) boundaries, and evaluate MPA effectiveness. Through the combination of remote sensing, GIS, and comprehensive ecological studies, we are developing large-scale, spatially-explicit, and statistically robust evaluations of MPAs as well as exploring the relationship between coral reef habitat complexity and coral reef fish population dynamics at multiple broad spatial scales to inform future MPA design.