The study and implementation of no-take marine reserves have increased rapidly over the past decade, providing ample data on the biological effects of reserve protection for a wide range of geographic locations and organisms. The plethora of new studies affords the opportunity to re-evaluate previous findings and address formerly unanswered questions with extensive data syntheses. Our results show, on average, positive effects of reserve protection on the biomass, numerical density, species richness, and size of organisms within their boundaries which are remarkably similar to those of past syntheses despite a near doubling of data. New analyses indicate that (1) these results do not appear to be an artifact of reserves being sited in better locations;(2) results do not appear to be driven by displaced fishing effort outside of reserves;(3) contrary to often-made assertions, reserves have similar if not greater …