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Ensuring that harvest strategies are robust to climate change is a top priority for many fisheries jurisdictions globally. This is because climate change is altering ecosystem structure and the productivity of marine species. We outline a range of approaches for incorporating climate change impacts within harvest strategies, including how a harvest strategy is specified and changes to monitoring requirements. Approaches evaluated include the use of extended stock assessments, multi-species and ecosystem models, revised management reference points, implementing regime shifts in model parameters, the provision of climate-sensitive catch advice, projections under alternative climate change scenarios and expanded use of management strategy evaluation. We evaluate the utility of these approaches against cost, data needs and uncertainty criteria; highlight key learnings from a range of global jurisdictions and demonstrate the broad array of options available outside of direct incorporation of climate variables within stock assessments. We identify approaches that have been successfully implemented and show that the most complex responses are not always the most successful. While there is no one-size-fits-all way to incorporate climate change within harvest strategies, we outline the need for flexible management arrangements. We also provide examples of approaches that have been successfully implemented, demonstrating that many of the most data-intensive responses will only be applicable in a few cases, necessitating the application of cheaper, less data-intensive approaches that are associated with greater uncertainty.

1. Anthropogenic disturbances particularly affect biodiversity in sensitive freshwater ecosystems by causing species loss. Thus, measuring the response of species to multiple disturbances is a key issue for conservation and environmental management. 2. As it is not practical to assess the response of every species in a community, we compared the performance of trait and taxonomic-based groupings of species for their abilities to predict species loss in a threatened freshwater fish assemblage. Specifically, we examined responses of a Fijian freshwater fish assemblage to deforestation, placement of anthropogenic barriers (overhanging culverts) and the presence of introduced cichlids. 3. Species grouped by traits showed more consistent responses to disturbances than taxonomic groups. In particular, species belonging to trait groups that were estuary associated favoured medium-to-hard substrate, while feeding specialists were highly likely to be absent in catchments with high deforestation and overhanging culverts. The presence of introduced cichlids (Oreochromis mossambicus and O. niloticus) had a smaller effect than deforestation and barriers, but was negatively associated with species richness of diadromous species with climbing ability and positively associated with presences of some piscivores. The trait groups also revealed that detritivores, species favouring soft substrate, and those with a broad dietary range were less sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances. 4. Our study indicates that using traits to predict species loss from disturbed environments can aid in detecting the responses of rare species to disturbance. In addition, we provided a method to estimate the consistency of species’ responses to disturbance. This study may ultimately help managers identify the most effective actions for conserving sensitive species that are seldom recorded in surveys.