Description: To be able to adequately assess potential environmental impacts of deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining, the establishment of a proper environmental baseline, incorporating both spatial and temporal variability, is essential. The aim of the present study was to evaluate both spatial and intra-annual variability in meiofauna (higher taxa) and nematode communities (families and genera, and Halalaimus species) within the license area of Global Sea mineral Resources (GSR) in the northeastern Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCFZ), and to determine the efficiency of the current sampling of meiofauna and nematode diversity. In October 2015, three polymetallic nodule-bearing sites, about 60–270 km apart, located at similar depths (ca. 4,500 m) were sampled, of which one site was sampled in April in that same year. Despite the relatively large geographical distances and the statistically significant, but small, differences in sedimentary characteristics between sites, meiofauna and nematode communities were largely similar in terms of abundance, composition and diversity. Between-site differences in community composition were mainly driven by a set of rare and less abundant taxa. Moreover, although surface primary productivity in April exceeded that in October, no significant changes were observed in sedimentary characteristics or in meiofauna and nematode communities. At all sites and in both periods, Nematoda were the prevailing meiofaunal phylum, which was in turn dominated by Monhysterid genera and Acantholaimus. Our findings support the earlier purported notion of a low degree of endemism for nematode genera and meiofauna taxa in the deep sea, and hint at the possibility of large distribution ranges for at least some Halalaimus species. Taxon richness estimators revealed that the current sampling design was able to characterize the majority of the meiofauna and nematode taxa present. To conclude, implications of the present findings for environmental management and future research needs are provided.

Description: A comprehensive understanding of the deep-sea environment and mining’s likely impacts is necessary to assess whether and under what conditions deep-seabed mining operations comply with the International Seabed Authority’s obligations to prevent ‘serious harm’ and ensure the ‘effective protection of the marine environment from harmful effects’ in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A synthesis of the peer-reviewed literature and consultations with deep-seabed mining stakeholders revealed that, despite an increase in deep-sea research, there are few categories of publicly available scientific knowledge comprehensive enough to enable evidence-based decision-making regarding environmental management, including whether to proceed with mining in regions where exploration contracts have been granted by the International Seabed Authority. Further information on deep-sea environmental baselines and mining impacts is critical for this emerging industry. Closing the scientific gaps related to deep-seabed mining is a monumental task that is essential to fulfilling the overarching obligation to prevent serious harm and ensure effective protection, and will require clear direction, substantial resources, and robust coordination and collaboration. Based on the information gathered, we propose a potential high-level road map of activities that could stimulate a much-needed discussion on the steps that should be taken to close key scientific gaps before any exploitation is considered. These steps include the definition of environmental goals and objectives, the establishment of an international research agenda to generate new deep-sea environmental, biological, and ecological information, and the synthesis of data that already exist.

Description: Food webs are central entities mediating processes and external pressures in marine ecosystems. They are essential to understand and predict ecosystem dynamics and provision of ecosystem services. Paradoxically, utilization of food web knowledge in marine environmental conservation and resource management is limited. To better understand the use of knowledge and barriers to incorporation in management, we assess its application related to the management of eutrophication, chemical contamination, fish stocks, and non-indigenous species. We focus on the Baltic, a severely impacted, but also intensely studied and actively managed semi-enclosed sea. Our assessment shows food web processes playing a central role in all four areas, but application varies strongly, from formalized integration in management decisions, to support in selecting indicators and setting threshold values, to informal knowledge explaining ecosystem dynamics and management performance. Barriers for integration are complexity of involved ecological processes and that management frameworks are not designed to handle such information. We provide a categorization of the multi-faceted uses of food web knowledge and benefits of future incorporation in management, especially moving towards ecosystem-based approaches as guiding principle in present marine policies and directives. We close with perspectives on research needs to support this move considering global and regional change.

Description: A vision for the establishment of a Geopark in Jordan is given in this work, with a subsequent application to the UNESCO Global Geopark programme. The Dead Sea area and its surroundings have suffered strong changes in the last decades, accompanied by a variety of natural hazards related to enhanced erosional processes. The aspiring Geopark will thematically encompass the influence that these changes and related natural hazards, including flash floods and subsidence, have had on the local population, from geological, over historical up to recent times. The hydrogeology and geomorphology, i.e., the connection between erosion by water, dissolution of minerals, and landscape evolution, will be the main guiding theme that connects the Eastern Rim Highlands with the Dead Sea rift valley through ephemeral wadis, vegetated springs areas, and traditionally communities. The creation of the Geopark is aimed at holistic, sustainable development and management of the area by eco-tourism, and includes education on water resource management, hazard awareness and resilience, as well as international research. We here present the conceptual approach to the initial development of a Geopark network in Jordan. In a narrative discourse, we highlight realised and further implementation steps, with an evaluation of the expected timeline, potential partner institutions, regional involvement and the chances for realisation.

Description: The diversity of life in the sea is critical to the health of ocean ecosystems that support living resources and therefore essential to the economic, nutritional, recreational, and health needs of billions of people. Yet there is evidence that the biodiversity of many marine habitats is being altered in response to a changing climate and human activity. Understanding this change, and forecasting where changes are likely to occur, requires monitoring of organism diversity, distribution, abundance, and health. It requires a minimum of measurements including productivity and ecosystem function, species composition, allelic diversity, and genetic expression. These observations need to be complemented with metrics of environmental change and socio-economic drivers. However, existing global ocean observing infrastructure and programs often do not explicitly consider observations of marine biodiversity and associated processes. Much effort has focused on physical, chemical and some biogeochemical measurements. Broad partnerships, shared approaches, and best practices are now being organized to implement an integrated observing system that serves information to resource managers and decision-makers, scientists and educators, from local to global scales. This integrated observing system of ocean life is now possible due to recent developments among satellite, airborne, and in situ sensors in conjunction with increases in information system capability and capacity, along with an improved understanding of marine processes represented in new physical, biogeochemical, and biological models.

Description: Marine life is controlled by multiple physical and chemical drivers and by diverse ecological processes. Many of these oceanic properties are being altered by climate change and other anthropogenic pressures. Hence, identifying the influences of multifaceted ocean change, from local to global scales, is a complex task. To guide policy-making and make projections of the future of the marine biosphere, it is essential to understand biological responses at physiological, evolutionary and ecological levels. Here, we contrast and compare different approaches to multiple driver experiments that aim to elucidate biological responses to a complex matrix of ocean global change. We present the benefits and the challenges of each approach with a focus on marine research, and guidelines to navigate through these different categories to help identify strategies that might best address research questions in fundamental physiology, experimental evolutionary biology and community ecology. Our review reveals that the field of multiple driver research is being pulled in complementary directions: the need for reductionist approaches to obtain process-oriented, mechanistic understanding and a requirement to quantify responses to projected future scenarios of ocean change. We conclude the review with recommendations on how best to align different experimental approaches to contribute fundamental information needed for science-based policy formulation.

Description: Considerable effort is being deployed to predict the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the ocean's biophysical environment, biodiversity, and natural resources to better understand how marine ecosystems and provided services to humans are likely to change and explore alternative pathways and options. We present an updated version of EcoOcean (v2), a spatial-temporal ecosystem modeling complex of the global ocean that spans food-web dynamics from primary producers to top predators. Advancements include an enhanced ability to reproduce spatial-temporal ecosystem dynamics by linking species productivity, distributions, and trophic interactions to the impacts of climate change and worldwide fisheries. The updated modeling platform is used to simulate past and future scenarios of change, where we quantify the impacts of alternative configurations of the ecological model, responses to climate-change scenarios, and the additional impacts of fishing. Climate-change scenarios are obtained from two Earth-System Models (ESMs, GFDL-ESM2M, and IPSL-CMA5-LR) and two contrasting emission pathways (RCPs 2.6 and 8.5) for historical (1950-2005) and future (2006-2100) periods. Standardized ecological indicators and biomasses of selected species groups are used to compare simulations. Results show how future ecological trajectories are sensitive to alternative configurations of EcoOcean, and yield moderate differences when looking at ecological indicators and larger differences for biomasses of species groups. Ecological trajectories are also sensitive to environmental drivers from alternative ESM outputs and RCPs, and show spatial variability and more severe changes when IPSL and RCP 8.5 are used. Under a non-fishing configuration, larger organisms show decreasing trends, while smaller organisms show mixed or increasing results. Fishing intensifies the negative effects predicted by climate change, again stronger under IPSL and RCP 8.5, which results in stronger biomass declines for species already losing under climate change, or dampened positive impacts for those increasing. Several species groups that win under climate change become losers under combined impacts, while only a few (small benthopelagic fish and cephalopods) species are projected to show positive biomass changes under cumulative impacts. EcoOcean v2 can contribute to the quantification of cumulative impact assessments of multiple stressors and of plausible ocean-based solutions to prevent, mitigate and adapt to global change.

Description: The aim of this work is to present the food web models developed using the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) software tool to describe structure and functioning of various European marine ecosystems (eastern, central and western Mediterranean Sea; Black Sea; Bay of Biscay, Celtic Sea and Iberian coast; Baltic Sea; North Sea; English Channel, Irish Sea and west Scottish Sea; and Norwegian and Barents Seas). A total of 195 Ecopath models based on 168 scientific publications, which report original, updated and modified versions, were reviewed. Seventy models included Ecosim temporal simulations while 28 implemented Ecospace spatiotemporal dynamics. Most of the models and publications referred to the western Mediterranean Sea followed by the English Channel, Irish Sea and west Scottish Sea sub-regions. In the Mediterranean Sea, the western region had the largest number of models and publications, followed by the central and eastern regions; similar trends were observed in previous literature reviews. Most models addressed ecosystem functioning and fisheries-related hypotheses while several investigated the impact of climate change, the presence of alien species, aquaculture, chemical pollution, infrastructure, and energy production. Model complexity (i.e., number of functional groups) increased over time. Main forcing factors considered to run spatial and temporal simulations were trophic interactions, fishery, and primary production. Average scores of ecosystem indicators derived from the Ecopath summary statistics were compared. Uncertainty was also investigated based on the use of the Ecosampler plug-in and the Monte Carlo routine; only one third of the reviewed publications incorporated uncertainty analysis. Only a limited number of the models included the use of the ECOIND plug-in which provides the user with quantitative output of ecological indicators. We assert that the EwE modelling approach is a successful tool which provides a quantitative framework to analyse the structure and dynamics of ecosystems, and to evaluate the potential impacts of different management scenarios.

Description: Predicting which non-native species will negatively impact biodiversity is a longstanding research priority. The Functional Response (FR; resource use in relation to availability) is a classical ecological concept that has been increasingly applied to quantify, assess and compare ecological impacts of non-native species. Despite this recent growth, an overview of applications and knowledge gaps across relevant contexts is currently lacking. We conducted a systematic review using a combination of terms regarding FR and invasion science to synthesise scientific studies that apply the FR approach in the field and to suggest new areas where it could have valuable applications. Trends of publications using FR in invasion science and publications about FR in general were compared through the Activity Index. Data were extracted from papers to reveal temporal, bibliographic, and geographic trends, patterns in study attributes such as type of interaction and habitat investigated, taxonomic groups used, and context-dependencies assessed. In total, 120 papers were included in the review. We identified substantial unevenness in the reporting of FRs in invasion science, despite a rapidly growing number of studies. To date, research has been geographically skewed towards North America and Europe, as well as towards predator-prey interactions in freshwater habitats. Most studies have focused on a few species of invertebrates and fishes. Species origin, life stage, environmental temperature and habitat complexity were the most frequently considered context-dependencies. We conclude that while the FR approach has thus far been narrowly applied, it has broad potential application in invasion science and can be used to test major hypotheses in this research field. © Larissa Faria et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Description: In nature, insects concurrently face multiple environmental stressors, a scenario likely increasing with climate change. Integrated stress resistance (ISR) thus often improves fitness and could drive invasiveness, but how physiological mechanisms influence invasion has lacked examination. Here, we investigated cross tolerance to abiotic stress factors which may influence range limits in the South American tomato pinworm – a global invader that is an ecologically and socially damaging crop pest. Specifically, we tested the effects of prior rapid cold- and heat-hardening (RCH and RHH), fasting and desiccation on cold and heat tolerance traits, as well as starvation and desiccation survivability between T. absoluta life stages. Acclimation effects on critical thermal minima (CTmin) and maxima (CTmax) were inconsistent, showing significantly deleterious effects of RCH on adult CTmax and CTmin and, conversely, beneficial acclimation effects of RCH on larval CTmin. While no beneficial effects of desiccation acclimation were recorded for desiccation tolerance, fasted individuals had significantly higher survival in adults, whereas fasting negatively affected larval tolerances. Furthermore, fasted and desiccation acclimated adults had significantly higher starvation tolerance, showing strong evidence for cross-tolerance. Our results show context-dependent ISR traits that may promote T. absoluta fitness and competitiveness. Given the frequent overlapping occurrence of these divergent stressors, ISR reported here may thus partly elucidate the observed rapid global spread of T. absoluta into more stressful environments than expected. This information is vital in determining the underpinnings of multi-stressor responses, which are fundamental in forecasting species responses to changing environments and management responses.