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Benedetti-Cecchi L, Bates AE, Strona G, Bulleri F, Horta E Costa B, Edgar GJ, Hereu B, Reed DC, Stuart-Smith RD, Barrett NS, Kushner DJ, Emslie MJ, García-Charton JA, Gonçalves EJ, Aspillaga E. Marine protected areas promote stability of reef fish communities under climate warming. Nat Commun 2024; 15:1822. [PMID: 38418445 PMCID: PMC10902350 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-44976-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 01/11/2024] [Indexed: 03/01/2024] Open
Abstract
Protection from direct human impacts can safeguard marine life, yet ocean warming crosses marine protected area boundaries. Here, we test whether protection offers resilience to marine heatwaves from local to network scales. We examine 71,269 timeseries of population abundances for 2269 reef fish species surveyed in 357 protected versus 747 open sites worldwide. We quantify the stability of reef fish abundance from populations to metacommunities, considering responses of species and functional diversity including thermal affinity of different trophic groups. Overall, protection mitigates adverse effects of marine heatwaves on fish abundance, community stability, asynchronous fluctuations and functional richness. We find that local stability is positively related to distance from centers of high human density only in protected areas. We provide evidence that networks of protected areas have persistent reef fish communities in warming oceans by maintaining large populations and promoting stability at different levels of biological organization.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Amanda E Bates
- Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
| | | | - Fabio Bulleri
- Department of Biology, University of Pisa, URL CoNISMa, Via Derna 1, Pisa, Italy
| | - Barbara Horta E Costa
- CCMAR, Centre of Marine Sciences, University of Algarve, Building 7, Faro, 8005-139, Portugal
| | - Graham J Edgar
- Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Reef Life Survey Foundation, Battery Point, Tasmania, Australia
| | - Bernat Hereu
- Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Facultat de Biologia, Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBIO), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Dan C Reed
- Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, 93106, CA, USA
| | - Rick D Stuart-Smith
- Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Reef Life Survey Foundation, Battery Point, Tasmania, Australia
| | - Neville S Barrett
- Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
| | | | - Michael J Emslie
- Australian Institute of Marine Science, Townsville, Queensland, Australia
| | | | - Emanuel J Gonçalves
- MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, ISPA - Instituto Universitário, Lisbon, Portugal
| | - Eneko Aspillaga
- Instituto Mediterráneo de Estudios Avanzados (IMEDEA, CSIC-UIB), 07190, Esporles, Spain
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Asante F, Bento M, Broszeit S, Bandeira S, Chitará-Nhandimo S, Amoné-Mabuto M, Correia AM. Marine macroinvertebrate ecosystem services under changing conditions of seagrasses and mangroves. MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH 2023; 189:106026. [PMID: 37295308 DOI: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2023.106026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2023] [Revised: 05/01/2023] [Accepted: 05/18/2023] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the impact of changing environmental conditions on MMI ES in seagrasses and mangroves. We used data from satellite and biodiversity platforms combined with field data to explore the links between ecosystem pressures (habitat conversion, overexploitation, climate change), conditions (environmental quality, ecosystem attributes), and MMI ES (provisioning, regulation, cultural). Both seagrass and mangrove extents increased significantly since 2016. While sea surface temperature showed no significant annual variation, sea surface partial pressure CO2, height above sea level and pH presented significant changes. Among the environmental quality variables only silicate, PO4 and phytoplankton showed significant annual varying trends. The MMI food provisioning increased significantly, indicating overexploitation that needs urgent attention. MMI regulation and cultural ES did not show significant trends overtime. Our results show that MMI ES are affected by multiple factors and their interactions can be complex and non-linear. We identified key research gaps and suggested future directions for research. We also provided relevant data that can support future ES assessments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Frederick Asante
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal; MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre/ARNET - Aquatic Research Network, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal; Université Libre de Bruxelles, Department of Biology of Organisms (DBO), Av. Franklin Roosevelt 50, 1050, Bruxelles, Belgium.
| | - Marta Bento
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal; MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre/ARNET - Aquatic Research Network, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal
| | - Stefanie Broszeit
- Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), Prospect Place, The Hoe, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, United Kingdom
| | - Salomão Bandeira
- Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, CP 257, Maputo, Mozambique
| | - Sadia Chitará-Nhandimo
- Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, CP 257, Maputo, Mozambique
| | - Manuela Amoné-Mabuto
- Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, CP 257, Maputo, Mozambique
| | - Alexandra Marçal Correia
- Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal; MARE - Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre/ARNET - Aquatic Research Network, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal.
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Bevilacqua S, Boero F, De Leo F, Guarnieri G, Mačić V, Benedetti-Cecchi L, Terlizzi A, Fraschetti S. β-diversity reveals ecological connectivity patterns underlying marine community recovery: Implications for conservation. ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS : A PUBLICATION OF THE ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2023:e2867. [PMID: 37114630 DOI: 10.1002/eap.2867] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2022] [Revised: 03/30/2023] [Accepted: 04/19/2023] [Indexed: 05/17/2023]
Abstract
As β-diversity can be seen as a proxy of ecological connections among species assemblages, modeling the decay of similarity in species composition at increasing distance may help elucidate spatial patterns of connectivity and local- to large-scale processes driving community assembly within a marine region. This, in turn, may provide invaluable information for setting ecologically coherent networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) in which protected communities are potentially interrelated and can mutually sustain against environmental perturbations. However, field studies investigating changes in β-diversity patterns at a range of spatial scales and in relation to disturbance are scant, limiting our understanding of how spatial ecological connections among marine communities may affect their recovery dynamics. We carried out a manipulative experiment simulating a strong physical disturbance on subtidal rocky reefs at several locations spanning >1000 km of coast in the Adriatic Sea (Mediterranean Sea) and compared β-diversity patterns and decay of similarity with distance and time by current transport between undisturbed and experimentally disturbed macrobenthic assemblages to shed light on connectivity processes and scales involved in recovery. In contrast to the expectation that very local-scale processes, such as vegetative regrowth and larval supply from neighboring undisturbed assemblages, might be the major determinants of recovery in disturbed patches, we found that connectivity mediated by currents at larger spatial scales strongly contributed to shape community reassembly after disturbance. Across our study sites in the Adriatic Sea, β-diversity patterns suggested that additional protected sites that matched hotspots of propagule exchange could increase the complementarity and strengthen the ecological connectivity throughout the MPA network. More generally, conditional to habitat distribution and selection of sites of high conservation priority (e.g., biodiversity hotspots), setting network internode distance within 100-150 km, along with sizing no-take zones to cover at least 5 km of coast, would help enhance the potential connectivity of Mediterranean subtidal rocky reef assemblages from local to large scale. These results can help improve conservation planning to achieve the goals of promoting ecological connectivity within MPA networks and enhancing their effectiveness in protecting marine communities against rapidly increasing natural and anthropogenic disturbances.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stanislao Bevilacqua
- Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
- Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare, Rome, Italy
| | - Ferdinando Boero
- Istituto per lo Studio degli Impatti Antropici e Sostenibilità in Ambiente Marino (CNR-IAS), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Genoa, Italy
- Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy
- Department of Biology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
| | - Francesco De Leo
- Istituto di Ricerca sugli Ecosistemi Terrestri (CNR-IRET), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Lecce, Italy
| | - Giuseppe Guarnieri
- Agenzia Regionale per la Prevenzione e la Protezione dell'Ambiente, Bari, Italy
| | - Vesna Mačić
- Institute of Marine Biology, University of Montenegro, Kotor, Montenegro
| | - Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi
- Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare, Rome, Italy
- Department of Biology, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
| | - Antonio Terlizzi
- Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy
- Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare, Rome, Italy
- Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples, Italy
| | - Simonetta Fraschetti
- Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare, Rome, Italy
- Department of Biology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
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Assessing the Effect of Full Protection on the Biomass of Ericaria amentacea and Understory Assemblages: Evidence from Two Mediterranean Marine Protected Areas. DIVERSITY 2023. [DOI: 10.3390/d15010089] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
Cystoseira sensu lato marine forests, which are among the most productive and diverse systems in rocky intertidal and subtidal habitats of the Mediterranean Sea, are experiencing a widespread decline throughout the basin due to increasing human pressures. Yet it is still unclear whether Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) may represent effective tools for conservation of these important habitat formers and their associated assemblages. Here, we compared the biomass of intertidal stands of Ericaria amentacea (C. Agardh) Molinari and Guiry and their understory assemblages between the no-take zone and control sites in two Mediterranean MPAs. We did not find evidence supporting a significant effect of full protection in increasing the biomass of E. amentacea stands and associated assemblages, except for macroalgae of the understory in one of the investigated MPAs, raising concerns on the potential effectiveness of MPAs in mitigating human impacts on these marine forests. Such findings call for major efforts to implement long-term monitoring programs of protected Cystoseira s.l. forests in order to inform an adaptive management of conservation measures within MPAs and eventually to set active interventions of restoration.
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