Abstract
Anthropogenic habitat alteration is a threat to biodiversity globally. Challenges to conservation are often related to lack of data and public awareness of conservation importance. In terrestrial conservation, these challenges have predominately been addressed using surrogate species. This includes umbrella species, whose ecological needs are known and encompass the needs of many other species that depend on the same habitats. Lack of public support for conservation has been addressed using flagship species, which are selected based on non-biological characteristics to promote public awareness of conservation needs and increase support for habitat conservation. Mangroves are the most threatened coastal habitats. Here, we test the hypothesis that the fish common snook (
Centropomus undecimalis
), an obligate user of mangrove creeks and other transitional coastal habitats as juveniles, is an appropriate umbrella species for habitat conservation. We examined data spanning 16 years across 27 mangrove creeks and show that protecting habitat use by juvenile snook protects an ecologically important fish assemblage of more than 55 native species, further adding value to mangrove habitats. In addition, because snook support an economically important recreational fishery with a high public profile comprised of fishers with increasing interests in conservation, snook is also an appropriate flagship species that will help leverage collaboration between the recreational fishery stakeholders and the agencies tasked with fishery management.