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.

人为的栖息地改变是对全球生物多样性的威胁。保护面临的挑战通常与缺乏数据和公众对保护重要性的认识有关。在陆地保护中，这些挑战主要是通过使用替代物种来解决的。这包括伞形物种，它们的生态需求是已知的，并且涵盖了依赖相同栖息地的许多其他物种的需求。使用基于非生物特征选择的旗舰物种来解决公众对保护缺乏支持的问题，以提高公众对保护需求的认识并增加对栖息地保护的支持。红树林是最受威胁的沿海栖息地。在这里，我们检验了常见的斯诺克鱼（Centropomus undecimalis) 是红树林小溪和其他过渡性沿海栖​​息地作为幼鱼的忠实使用者，是栖息地保护的合适保护伞物种。我们检查了跨越 16 年的 27 条红树林小溪的数据，并表明保护幼鱼使用栖息地可以保护超过 55 种本地物种的生态重要鱼类组合，进一步增加红树林栖息地的价值。此外，由于斯诺克支持经济上重要的休闲渔业，其公众形象由对保护越来越感兴趣的渔民组成，因此斯诺克也是一个合适的旗舰物种，将有助于利用休闲渔业利益相关者和负责渔业管理的机构之间的合作。