Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Inter-Research for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Ecology Progress Series 491 (2013): 67-76, doi:10.3354/meps10463.
Description:
To predict how benthic communities will respond to disturbance, it is necessary to understand
how disturbance affects the planktonic larval supply available to recolonize the area. Deep-sea
hydrothermal vent fauna along the East Pacific Rise (EPR) experience frequent local extinctions
due to tectonic and magmatic events, but the effects on regional larval abundance and diversity
are unknown. We had been monitoring larvae at 9° 50' N on the EPR prior to the 2006 eruption
and were able to resume collections shortly afterward. We found that many species that were
common before the eruption became significantly less so afterward, whereas a few other species
experienced a transient spike in abundance. Surprisingly, overall species richness in the plankton
was high 9 mo after the eruption, but then decreased sharply after 1 yr and had not returned to
pre-eruption levels after 2 yr. These results suggest that recovery from disturbance may continue
to be affected by limited larval supply even several years after a disturbance event. This delay in
recovery means that larvae of pioneer species may dominate potential colonists, even after
benthic habitats have transitioned to conditions that favor later-successional species. Moreover,
the combined effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbance (e.g. mining) would be likely to
cause more profound and long-lasting changes than either event alone. Our results indicate that
we do not have sufficient data to predict the timing of recovery after disturbance in the deep sea,
even in a well-studied vent system.
Description:
Support was provided by
National Science Foundation Grant OCE-0424953 and a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
grant from the Deep Ocean Exploration Institute.
Keywords:
Recolonization
;
Deep sea
;
Hydrothermal vents
;
Disturbance ecology
;
Ecological succession
;
Larval supply
;
Larval dispersal
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
