Description: Data on marine biota exist in many formats and sources, such as published literature, data repositories, and unpublished material. Due to this heterogeneity, information is difficult to find, access and combine, severely impeding its reuse for further scientific analysis and its long-term availability for future generations. To address this challenge, we present CRITTERBASE, a publicly accessible data warehouse and interactive portal that currently hosts quality-controlled and taxonomically standardized presence/absence, abundance, and biomass data for 18,644 samples and 3,664 benthic taxa (2,824 of which at species level). These samples were collected by grabs, underwater imaging or trawls in Arctic, North Sea and Antarctic regions between the years 1800 and 2014. Data were collated from literature, unpublished data, own research and online repositories. All metadata and links to primary sources are included. We envision CRITTERBASE becoming a valuable and continuously expanding tool for a wide range of usages, such as studies of spatio-temporal biodiversity patterns, impacts and risks of climate change or the evidence-based design of marine protection policies.

Description: Low-frequency noise (LFN), or sound waves with frequencies between 10 Hz to 500 Hz, has increased substantially in coastal and shelf waters over the last decades. This is in large part due to the escalation in human activities such as shipping, wind farming, and pile-driving. Concern over how LFN affects marine mammal and fish welfare (eg. foraging efficiency, acoustic communication interference) has led the European Marine Strategy Framework Direction to include noise as a descriptor for achieving “good” environmental status. While the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals and fish are by no means well documented, the effects of such noise on marine benthic invertebrates, crucial ecosystem engineers that continually rework sediment, are even less understood. Here, we present how LFN affects the behavior and sediment reworking activities of select macrobenthic invertebrate species from the North Atlantic in controlled laboratory setups. The polychaete Lanice conchilega, an abundant benthic invertebrate, exhibited behavioral responses to LFN in the form of modified pumping behavior. The amphipod crustacean Corophium volutator was negatively affected by LFN, exhibiting lower bioturbation rates and shallower burial depths compared to controls. The effect of LFN on the polychaete Arenicola marina and the bivalve Limecola balthica remained inconclusive, though A. marina displayed greater variability in bioirrigation rates when exposed to LFN. Benthic macroinvertebrates may be in jeopardy alone with the crucial ecosystem-maintaining services they provide, thus more research is urgently needed to understand, predict, and manage the impacts of anthropogenic noise pollution on marine fauna and their associated ecosystems.

Description: In times of rapidly increasing multiple anthropogenic impacts on polar marine ecosystems and biodiversity, understanding, sustainable-use management and protection of these biotas is a matter of great concern. Research on marine biotas and their interactions with each other and the environment is fundamental in that regard, but available data are still diverse and scattered, as they exist in many formats and sources, such as published literature, data repositories, and unpublished material. Due to this heterogeneity, information is difficult to find, access and combine, severely impeding its reuse for further scientific analysis and its long-term availability for future generations. Scientists, decision makers, and the public require a versatile tool to compile, synthesize and manage biodiversity data in a transparent, efficient and comprehensible way and with high-level quality assurance. To address this challenge, we developed, implemented and utilize CRITTERBASE (https://critterbase.awi.de), a publicly accessible data warehouse and interactive portal that complies with the FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability of data). Its purpose is to complement long-term data storage repositories by providing powerful but easy-to-use data ingest, retrieval and exploration tools, thus facilitating the analysis of biodiversity data across multiple spatial and temporal scales and in wider contexts. Currently, it hosts quality-controlled and taxonomically standardized presence/absence, abundance, and biomass data from Arctic, North Sea and Antarctic regions, collated from the literature, unpublished data, own research and online repositories (with all metadata and links to primary sources included), for 3,173 polar benthic taxa (2,444 of which at species level) from 12,209 samples collected with grabs, underwater imaging or trawls between 1800 and 2014. CRITTERBASE is currently holding benthic biodiversity data only but because of its comprehensive and flexible data model it is suited to include information about further biotas and habitats. Therefore, we envision it becoming a valuable and continuously expanding tool for a wide range of usages, such as studies of spatio-temporal biodiversity patterns, impacts and risks of climate change or the evidence-based design of marine protection policies.

Description: Sounds from human activities such as shipping and seismic surveys have been progressively invading natural soundscapes and pervading oceanic ambient sounds for decades. Benthic invertebrates are important ecosystem engineers that continually rework the sediment they live in. Here, we tested how low-frequency noise (LFN), a significant component of noise pollution, affects the sediment reworking activities of selected macrobenthic invertebrates. In a controlled laboratory setup, the effects of acute LFN exposure on the behavior of three abundant bioturbators on the North Atlantic coasts were explored for the first time by tracking their sediment reworking and bioirrigation activities in noisy and control environments via luminophore and sodium bromide (NaBr) tracers, respectively. The amphipod crustacean Corophium volutator was negatively affected by LFN, exhibiting lower bioturbation rates and shallower luminophore burial depths compared to controls. The effect of LFN on the polychaete Arenicola marina and the bivalve Limecola balthica remained inconclusive, although A. marina displayed greater variability in bioirrigation rates when exposed to LFN. Furthermore, a potential stress response was observed in L. balthica that could reduce bioturbation potential. Benthic macroinvertebrates may be in jeopardy along with the crucial ecosystem-maintaining services they provide. More research is urgently needed to understand, predict, and manage the impacts of anthropogenic noise pollution on marine fauna and their associated ecosystems.

Description: Benthic organisms and their bioturbation activities have a profound effect on a multitude of sediment properties. While many studies have already explored benthic impacts at small temporal and spatial scales, little is known on how the small-scale effects accumulate and interactively guide large-scale (km-scale) morphological evolution. Here we firstly summarize the most important processes of benthos affecting sediment stability and then explore existing biomorphodynamic modeling studies both at small- and large-scales. In general, microbenthos (body size 〈0.1 mm) mainly stabilizes sediments while meio- (0.1–1 mm) and macrobenthos (〉1 mm) may stabilize or destabilize sediments. Among all types of sediment, fine-grained fraction (silt and clay) is most sensitive to the impact of benthos. Benthic organisms have the capability to mediate sediment transport and sedimentation patterns beyond their habitats on the long-term and over a large-scale. However, so far, numerical models evaluating benthic impact are limited to explorative studies and have not reached a stage where they can be used for predictive modeling. The barriers hindering a further development of biomorphodynamic models include not only limited understanding of fundamental biological/bio-physical processes affecting morphological development and dynamic feedback loops among them but also a shortage of data for model calibration and confirmation of simulation results. On the other hand, thriving for higher model complexity does not necessarily lead to better performance. Before conducting biomorphodynamic modeling, researchers must figure out which questions can be answered in a meaningful sense with simulation results that can be compared with observations and which level of modeling complexity is sufficient for that purpose.

Description: The contribution of sediments to nutrient cycling of the coastal North Sea is strongly controlled by the intensity of fluxes across the sediment water interface. Pore-water advection is one major exchange mechanism that is well described by models, as it is determined by physical parameters. In contrast, biotransport (i.e., bioirrigation, bioturbation) as the other major transport mechanism is much more complex. Observational data reflecting biotransport, from the German Bight for example, is scarce. We sampled the major sediment provinces of the German Bight repeatedly over the years from 2013 to 2019. By employing ex situ whole core incubations, we established the seasonal and spatial variability of macrofauna-sustained benthic fluxes of oxygen and nutrients. A multivariate, partial least squares analysis identified faunal activity, in specifically bioturbation and bioirrigation, alongside temperature, as the most important drivers of oxygen and nutrient fluxes. Their combined effect explained 63% of the observed variability in oxygen fluxes, and 36–48% of variability in nutrient fluxes. Additional 10% of the observed variability of fluxes were explained by sediment type and the availability of plankton biomass. Based on our extrapolation by sediment provinces, we conclude that pore-water advection and macrofaunal activity contributed equally to the total benthic oxygen uptake in the German Bight.