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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2015-06-16
    Description: The relationship between biodiversity and stability of marine benthic assemblages was investigated through meta-analyses using existing data sets (n = 28) covering various spatial (m-km) and temporal (1973-2006; ranging from 5 to 〉250 months) scales in different benthic habitats (emergent rock, rock pools and sedimentary habitats) over different European marine systems (North Atlantic and western Mediterranean). Stability was measured by a lower variability in time, and variability was estimated as temporal variance of species richness, total abundance (density or % cover) and community structure (using Bray-Curtis dissimilarities on species composition and abundance). Stability generally decreased with species richness. Temporal variability in species richness increased with the number of species at both quadrat (〈1 m2) and site (100 m2) scales, while no relationship was observed by multivariate analyses. Positive relationships were also observed at the scale of site between temporal variability in species richness and variability in community structure with evenness estimates. This implies that the relationship between species richness or evenness and species richness variability is slightly positive and depends on the scale of observation. Thus, species richness does not stabilize temporal fluctuations in species number, rather species rich assemblages are those most likely to undergo the largest fluctuations in species numbers and abundance from time to time. Changes within community assemblages in terms of structure are, however, generally independent of biodiversity. Except for sedimentary and rock pool habitats, no relationship was observed between temporal variation of total abundances and diversity at either scale. Overall, our results emphasise that the relation between species richness and species-level measures of temporal variability depend on scale of measurements, type of habitats and the marine system (North Atlantic and Mediterranean) considered.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , isiRev
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  • 2
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    In:  EPIC3Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 367(1605), pp. 2971-2978, ISSN: 0962-8436
    Publication Date: 2020-06-25
    Description: Understanding and predicting the consequences of warming for complex ecosystems and indeed individual species remains a major ecological challenge. Here, we investigated the effect of increased seawater temperatures on the metabolic and consumption rates of five distinct marine species. The experimental species reflected different trophic positions within a typical benthic East Atlantic food web, and included a herbivorous gastropod, a scavenging decapod, a predatory echinoderm, a decapod and a benthic-feeding fish. We examined the metabolism–body mass and consumption–body mass scaling for each species, and assessed changes in their consumption efficiencies. Our results indicate that body mass and temperature effects on metabolism were inconsistent across species and that some species were unable to meet metabolic demand at higher temperatures, thus highlighting the vulnerability of individual species to warming. While body size explains a large proportion of the variation in species’ physiological responses to warming, it is clear that idiosyncratic species responses, irrespective of body size, complicate predictions of population and ecosystem level response to future scenarios of climate change.
    Repository Name: EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
    Type: Article , isiRev
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2020-02-06
    Description: Summary: The relationship between community structure and the functioning of ecosystems is the subject of ongoing debate. Biological or functional trait-based approaches that capture life strategy, morphology and behavioural characteristics have received far less attention than taxonomic diversity in this context, despite their more intuitive link to ecosystem functioning. Macrophyte primary production underpins aquatic food webs, regulates benthic and pelagic ecosystems and is a key aspect of the global carbon cycle. This study spans a range of aquatic biomes across Europe and aims to examine potential for predicting primary production of macrophyte communities based on the functional traits of species and identify the traits that are the most informative indicators of macrophyte production. Macrophyte primary production was assessed based on the oxygen production of the whole community, linked to biomasses of selected biological traits derived of its component species and analysed using the novel boosted regression trees modelling technique. Results showed that functional traits derived from macrophyte community data explained most of the variation in primary production of macrophyte communities without the need to incorporate environmental data on the habitats. Macrophyte primary production was influenced by a combination of tolerance, morphology and life habit traits; however tolerance traits contributed most of variability in macrophyte primary production when all traits were analysed jointly. This study also showed the existence of trait clustering as the studied trait categories were not fully independent; strong interlinkages between and within trait categories emerged. Our study suggests that functional trait analysis captures different aspects of ecosystem functioning and thereby enables assessing primary production of macrophyte communities over geographically distinct areas without extensive taxonomic and environmental data. This could result in a novel framework through which a simplification of the general procedure of production estimations and comparisons across environmental gradients can be achieved.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2017-12-21
    Description: Eutrophication, coupled with loss of herbivory due to habitat degradation and overharvesting, has increased the frequency and severity of macroalgal blooms worldwide. Macroalgal blooms interfere with human activities in coastal areas, and sometimes necessitate costly algal removal programmes. They also have many detrimental effects on marine and estuarine ecosystems, including induction of hypoxia, release of toxic hydrogen sulphide into the sediments and atmosphere, and the loss of ecologically and economically important species. However, macroalgal blooms can also increase habitat complexity, provide organisms with food and shelter, and reduce other problems associated with eutrophication. These contrasting effects make their overall ecological impacts unclear. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the overall effects of macroalgal blooms on several key measures of ecosystem structure and functioning in marine ecosystems. We also evaluated some of the ecological and methodological factors that might explain the highly variable effects observed in different studies. Averaged across all studies, macroalgal blooms had negative effects on the abundance and species richness of marine organisms, but blooms by different algal taxa had different consequences, ranging from strong negative to strong positive effects. Blooms' effects on species richness also depended on the habitat where they occurred, with the strongest negative effects seen in sandy or muddy subtidal habitats and in the rocky intertidal. Invertebrate communities also appeared to be particularly sensitive to blooms, suffering reductions in their abundance, species richness, and diversity. The total net primary productivity, gross primary productivity, and respiration of benthic ecosystems were higher during macroalgal blooms, but blooms had negative effects on the productivity and respiration of other organisms. These results suggest that, in addition to their direct social and economic costs, macroalgal blooms have ecological effects that may alter their capacity to deliver important ecosystem services.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2021-02-08
    Description: Invasive ecosystem engineers (IEE) are potentially one of the most influential types of biological invaders. They are expected to have extensive ecological impacts by altering the physical–chemical structure of ecosystems, thereby changing the rules of existence for a broad range of resident biota. To test the generality of this expectation, we used a global systematic review and meta-analysis to examine IEE effects on the abundance of individual species and communities, biodiversity (using several indices) and ecosystem functions, focusing on marine and estuarine environments. We found that IEE had a significant effect (positive and negative) in most studies testing impacts on individual species, but the overall (cumulative) effect size was small and negative. Many individual studies showed strong IEE effects on community abundance and diversity, but the direction of effects was variable, leading to statistically non-significant overall effects in most categories. In contrast, there was a strong overall effect on most ecosystem functions we examined. IEE negatively affected metabolic functions and primary production, but positively affected nutrient flux, sedimentation and decomposition. We use the results to develop a conceptual model by highlighting pathways whereby IEE impact communities and ecosystem functions, and identify several sources of research bias in the IEE-related invasion literature. Only a few of the studies simultaneously quantified IEE effects on community/diversity and ecosystem functions. Therefore, understanding how IEE may alter biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships should be a primary focus of future studies of invasion biology. Moreover, the clear effects of IEE on ecosystem functions detected in our study suggest that scientists and environmental managers ought to examine how the effects of IEE might be manifested in the services that marine ecosystems provide to humans.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed , info:eu-repo/semantics/article
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  • 6
    Publication Date: 2021-02-08
    Description: Habitat-forming species sustain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in harsh environments through the amelioration of physical stress. Nonetheless, their role in shaping patterns of species distribution under future climate scenarios is generally overlooked. Focusing on coastal systems, we assess how habitat-forming species can influence the ability of stress-sensitive species to exhibit plastic responses, adapt to novel environmental conditions, or track suitable climates. Here, we argue that habitat-former populations could be managed as a nature-based solution against climate-driven loss of biodiversity. Drawing from different ecological and biological disciplines, we identify a series of actions to sustain the resilience of marine habitat-forming species to climate change, as well as their effectiveness and reliability in rescuing stress-sensitive species from increasingly adverse environmental conditions.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
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  • 7
    Publication Date: 2017-12-14
    Description: In a recent letter, Thomsen and Wernberg (2015) reanalyzed data compiled for our recent paper (Lyons et al. 2014). In that paper, we examined the effects of macroalgal blooms and macroalgal mats on seven important measures of community structure and ecosystem functioning, and explored several ecological and methodological factors that might explain some of the variation in the observed effects. Thomsen and Wernberg (2015) reanalyzed two small subsets of the data, focusing on experimental studies examining effects of blooms/mats on invertebrate abundance. Their analyses revealed two interesting patterns.
    Type: Article , PeerReviewed
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