Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
The Western Indian Ocean harbors one of theworld’s most diverse marine biota yet is threatened byexploitation with few conservation measures in place.Primary candidates for conservation in the region are theScattered Islands (Iles Eparses), a group of relativelypristine and uninhabited islands in the MozambiqueChannel. However, while optimal conservation strategiesdepend on the degree of population connectivity amongspatially isolated habitats, very few studies have beenconducted in the area. Here, we use highly variablemicrosatellite markers from two damselfishes (Amphiprionakallopisos and Dascyllus trimaculatus) with differing lifehistory traits [pelagic larval duration (PLD), adult habitat]to compare genetic structure and connectivity among theseislands using classic population structure indices as well asBayesian clustering methods. All classical fixation indexesFST, RST, G0ST, and Jost’s D show stronger genetic differentiationamong islands for A. akallopisos compared to D.trimaculatus, consistent with the former species’ shorterPLD and stronger adult site attachment, which may restrictlarval dispersal potential. In agreement with these results,the Bayesian analysis revealed clear genetic differentiationamong the islands in A. akallopisos, separating the southerngroup (Bassas da India and Europa) from the center(Juan de Nova) and northern (Iles Glorieuses) islands, butnot for D. trimaculatus. Local oceanographic patterns suchas eddies that occur along the Mozambique Channel appearto parallel the results reported for A. akallopisos, but suchfeatures seem to have little effect on the genetic differentiationof D. trimaculatus. The contrasting patterns ofgenetic differentiation between species within the samefamily highlight the importance of accounting for diverselife history traits when assessing community-wide connectivity,an increasingly common consideration in conservationplanning.
ISSN: 0722-4028

hal-01561992
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01561992
DOI : 10.1007/s00338-016-1495-z

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
As climate change continues to impact socio-ecological systems, tools that assist conservation managers to understand vulnerability and target adaptations are essential. Quantitative assessments of vulnerability are rare because available frameworks are complex and lack guidance for dealing with data limitations and integrating across scales and disciplines. This paper describes a semi-quantitative method for assessing vulnerability to climate change that integrates socio-ecological factors to address management objectives and support decision-making. The method applies a framework first adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and uses a structured 10-step process. The scores for each framework element are normalized and multiplied to produce a vulnerability score and then the assessed components are ranked from high to low vulnerability. Sensitivity analyses determine which indicators most influence the analysis and the resultant decision-making process so data quality for these indicators can be reviewed to increase robustness. Prioritisation of components for conservation considers other economic, social and cultural values with vulnerability rankings to target actions that reduce vulnerability to climate change by decreasing exposure or sensitivity and/or increasing adaptive capacity. This framework provides practical decision-support and has been applied to marine ecosystems and fisheries, with two case applications provided as examples: (1) food security in Pacific Island nations under climate-driven fish declines, and (2) fisheries in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. The step-wise process outlined here is broadly applicable and can be undertaken with minimal resources using existing data, thereby having great potential to inform adaptive natural resource management in diverse locations.
ISSN: 0308-597X

hal-01380403
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01380403
DOI : 10.1016/j.marpol.2016.09.024

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD European Geosciences Union
Résumé : International audience
During the GWADASEIS cruise (Lesser Antilles volcanic arc, February-March 2009) a very high resolution (VHR) seismic-reflection survey was performed in order to constrain Late Quaternary to Present faulting. The profiles we obtained evidence frequent "ponding" of reworked sediments in the deepest areas, similar to the deposition of Mediterranean "homogenites". These bodies are acoustically transparent (few ms t.w.t. thick) and are often deposited on the hanging walls of dominantly normal faults, at the base of scarps. Their thickness appears sufficient to compensate (i.e. bury) co-seismic scarps between successive earthquakes, resulting in a flat and horizontal sea floor through time. In a selected area (offshore Montserrat and Nevis islands), piston coring (4 to 7 m long) was dedicated to a sedimentological analysis of the most recent of these particular layers. It corresponds to non-stratified homogenous calcareous silty sand (reworked calcareous plankton and minor volcanoclastics). This layer can be up to 2 m thick, and overlies finegrained hemipelagites. The upper centimeters of the latter represent the normal RedOx water/sediment interface. 210Pb and 137Cs activities lack in the massive sands, while a normal profile of unsupported 210Pb decrease is observed in the hemipelagite below, together with a 137Cs peak correspond- ing to the Atmospheric Nuclear Experiments (1962). The RedOx level was thus capped by a recent instantaneous major sedimentary event considered as post-1970 AD; candidate seismic events to explain this sedimentary deposits are either the 16 March 1985 earthquake or the 8 October 1974 one (Mw=6.3 and Mw=7.4, respectively). This leads to consider that the syntectonic sedimentation in this area is not continuous but results from accumulation of thick homogenites deposited after the earthquakes (as observed in the following weeks after Haiti January 2010 event, McHugh et al., 2011). The existence of such deposits suggests that, in the area of study, vertical throw likely results from cumulated effects of separated earthquakes rather than from aseismic creep. Examination of VHR profiles shows that all major co-seismic offsets are recorded in the fault growth sequence and that co-seismic offsets can be precisely estimated. By using a sedimentation rate deduced from 210Pb decrease curve (0.5 mm yr−1) and taking into account minor reworking events detected in cores, we show that the Redonda system may have been responsible for five >M6 events during the last 34 000 yr. The approach presented in this work differs from fault activity analyses using displaced sets of isochronous surfaces and postulating co-seismic offsets. Combining VHR seismic imagery and coring we can decipher co-seismic vs. slow continuous displacement, and thus actually estimate the amplitude and the time distribution of major co-seismic offsets.
ISSN: 1561-8633

insu-00844581
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00844581
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00844581/document
https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00844581/file/nhess-12-1755-2012.pdf
DOI : 10.5194/nhess-12-1755-2012

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Wiley
Résumé : International audience
Climatic niche conservatism, the tendency of species-climate associations to remain unchanged across space and time, is pivotal for forecasting the spread of invasive species and biodiversity changes. Indeed, it represents one of the key assumptions underlying species distribution models (SDMs), the main tool currently available for predicting range shifts of species. However, to date, no comprehensive assessment of niche conservatism is available for the marine realm. We use the invasion by Indo-Pacific tropical fishes into the Mediterranean Sea, the world's most invaded marine basin, to examine the conservatism of the climatic niche. We show that tropical invaders may spread far beyond their native niches and that SDMs do not predict their new distributions better than null models. Our results suggest that SDMs may underestimate the potential spread of invasive species and call for prudence in employing these models in order to forecast species invasion and their response to environmental change.
ISSN: 1461-023X

hal-01136126
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01136126
DOI : 10.1111/ele.12401

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
A comprehensive inventory of global biodiversity would be greatly improved by automating methods for species delimitation. The Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery method, the Poisson tree processes algorithm and the Generalized mixed Yule coalescent model have been proposed as means of increasing the rate of biodiversity description using single locus data. We applied these methods to explore the diversity within the Aglaopheniidae, a hydrozoan family with many species widely distributed across tropical and tem perate oceans. Our analyses revealed widespread cryptic diversity in this family, almost half of the morpho species presenting several independent evolutionary lineages, as well as support for cases of synonymy. For two common species of this family, Lytocarpia brevirostris and Macrorhynchia phoenicea, we compared the outputs to clustering analyses based on microsatellite data and to nuclear gene phylo genies. For L. brevirostris, microsatellite data were congruent with results of the species delimitation methods, revealing the existence of two cryptic species with Indo Pacific distribution. For M. phoenicea, all analyses confirmed the presence of two cryptic species within the South Western Indian Ocean. Our study suggests that the diversity of Aglaopheniidae might be much higher than assumed, likely related to low dispersal capacities. Sequence based species delimitation methods seem highly valuable to reveal cryptic diversity in hydrozoans; their application in an integrative framework will be very useful in describing the phyletic diversity of these organisms.
ISSN: 1055-7903

hal-01359407
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01359407
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01359407/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01359407/file/Postaire-etal2016MolPhylEvol_sp_delim_hydraires_HAL.pdf
DOI : 10.1016/j.ympev.2016.08.013

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Background : Biological communities are normally composed of a few abundant and many rare species. This pattern is particularly prominent in microbial communities, in which most constituent taxa are usually extremely rare. Although abundant and rare subcommunities may present intrinsic characteristics that could be crucial for understanding community dynamics and ecosystem functioning, microbiologists normally do not differentiate between them. Here, we investigate abundant and rare subcommunities of marine microbial eukaryotes, a crucial group of organisms that remains among the least-explored biodiversity components of the biosphere. We surveyed surface waters of six separate coastal locations in Europe, independently considering the picoplankton, nanoplankton, and microplankton/mesoplankton organismal size fractions.Results : Deep Illumina sequencing of the 18S rRNA indicated that the abundant regional community was mostly structured by organismal size fraction, whereas the rare regional community was mainly structured by geographic origin. However, some abundant and rare taxa presented similar biogeography, pointing to spatiotemporal structure in the rare microeukaryote biosphere. Abundant and rare subcommunities presented regular proportions across samples, indicating similar species-abundance distributions despite taxonomic compositional variation. Several taxa were abundant in one location and rare in other locations, suggesting large oscillations in abundance. The substantial amount of metabolically active lineages found in the rare biosphere suggests that this subcommunity constitutes a diversity reservoir that can respond rapidly to environmental change.Conclusions : We propose that marine planktonic microeukaryote assemblages incorporate dynamic and metabolically active abundant and rare subcommunities, with contrasting structuring patterns but fairly regular proportions, across space and time.
ISSN: 0960-9822

hal-01149637
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01149637
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01149637/document
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01149637/file/Logares_et_al_CurrentBiol_accepted.pdf
DOI : 10.1016/j.cub.2014.02.050

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD PeerJ
Résumé : International audience
Acoustic recording has been recognized as a valuable tool for non-intrusive monitoring of the marine environment, complementing traditional visual surveys. Acoustic surveys conducted on coral ecosystems have so far been restricted to barrier reefs and to shallow depths (10–30 m). Since they may provide refuge for coral reef organisms, the monitoring of outer reef slopes and describing of the soundscapes of deeper environment could provide insights into the characteristics of different biotopes of coral ecosystems. In this study, the acoustic features of four different habitats, with different topographies and substrates, located at different depths from 10 to 100 m, were recorded during daytime on the outer reef slope of the north Coast of Moorea Island (French Polynesia). Barrier reefs appeared to be the noisiest habitats whereas the average sound levels at other habitats decreased with their distance from the reef and with increasing depth. However, sound levels were higher than expected by propagation models, supporting that these habitats possess their own sound sources. While reef sounds are known to attract marine larvae, sounds from deeper habitats may then also have a non-negligible attractive potential, coming into play before the reef itself.
ISSN: 2167-8359

Droits : http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
hal-01654685
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01654685
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01654685/document
http://hal.upmc.fr/hal-01654685/file/peerj-4019.pdf
DOI : 10.7717/peerj.4019

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Oldendorf/Luhe
Résumé : International audience
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly used in studies of marinefauna. Here, we tested the use of a UAV (DJI Phantom II®) to assess fine-scale variation in densitiesof 2 elasmobranchs (blacktip reef sharks Carcharhinus melanopterus and pink whiprays Himanturafai) on reef systems off Moorea (French Polynesia). We flew parallel transects designed to samplereef habitats (fringing, channel and sandflat habitats) across 2 survey blocks. Block 1 included ashark and ray provisioning site with potentially higher elasmobranch densities, whereas Block 2most likely had lower densities with no provisioning activities. Across 10 survey days in July 2014,we flew 3 transects (400 m) within each survey block (n = 60 total transect passes). As expected,densities (animals ha−1) were significantly higher in Block 1 than in Block 2, particularly where provisioningactivities occur. Differences between habitats surveyed were also found. Our study providesthe first direct estimates of shark and ray densities in coral-reef ecosystems and demonstratesthat UAVs can produce important fishery-independent data for elasmobranchs, particularly inshallow-water habitats.
ISSN: 0171-8630

hal-01416757
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01416757
DOI : 10.3354/meps11945

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Royal Society, The
Résumé : International audience
Endemic species are frequently assumed to have lower genetic diversity than species with large distributions, even if closely related. This assumption is based on research from the terrestrial environment and theoretical evolutionary modelling. We test this assumption in the marine environment by analysing the mitochondrial genetic diversity of 33 coral reef fish species from five families sampled from Pacific Ocean archipelagos. Surprisingly, haplotype and nucleotide diversity did not differ significantly between endemic and widespread species. The probable explanation is that the effective population size of some widespread fishes locally is similar to that of many of the endemics. Connectivity across parts of the distribution of the widespread species is probably low, so widespread species can operate like endemics at the extreme or isolated parts of their range. Mitochondrial genetic diversity of many endemic reef fish species may not either limit range size or be a source of vulnerability.
ISSN: 0962-8452

hal-01333327
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01333327
DOI : 10.1098/rspb.2014.1068

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
Ecosystems are commonly affected by natural, episodic disturbances that can abruptly and drastically alter communities. Although it has been shown that resilient ecosystems can eventually recover to pre-disturbed states, the extent to which communities in early stages of recovery could be affected by multiple anthropogenic stressors is poorly understood. Pervasive and rising anthropogenic stressors in coastal marine systems that could interactively affect the recovery of these systems following natural disturbances include high sedimentation, nutrient enrichment, and overfishing. Using a 6-month field experiment, we examined the effects of all combinations of these three stressors on key functional groups in the benthic community growing on simulated, post-disturbance reef patches within a system recovering from large-scale natural disturbances (corallivorous seastar outbreak and cyclone). Our study revealed that sedimentation, nutrient enrichment, and overfishing (simulated using exclusion cages) interactively affected coral survival and algal growth, with taxon-specific effects at multiple scales. First, our treatments affected corals and algae differently, with sedimentation being more detrimental to macroalgal growth but less detrimental to coral (Porites rus) survival in caged plots, driving significant interactions between sedimentation and caging for both taxa. We also observed distinct responses between coral species and between algal functional groups, with the most extensive responses from algal turf biomass, for which sedimentation suppressed the synergistic (positive) combined effect of nutrient enrichment and caging. Our findings suggest that different combinations of ubiquitous anthropogenic stressors, related to either sea- or land-based activities, interactively influence community recovery from disturbance and may alter species compositions in the resulting community. Our findings further suggest that anthropogenic stressors could promote further degradation of coral reefs following natural disturbances by inhibiting recovery to coral-dominated states that provide vital ecosystem services to coastal populations worldwide.
ISSN: 0722-4028

hal-01430977
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01430977
DOI : 10.1007/s00338-016-1489-x

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Magnolia Press
Résumé : International audience
Despite their importance in marine biodiversity, invertebrates are far less studied than vertebrates. Given the current globalbiodiversity crisis and insufficient taxonomic resources, sustained efforts need to be undertaken to assess species diversity,especially in the highly threatened ‘biodiversity hotspots’. Réunion is a young volcanic island lying in the Mascarene Islands(south-western Indian Ocean, SWIO), a marine biodiversity hotspot. A substantial sampling effort was conductedaround Réunion Island to document shallow water reef-associated ophiuroid (brittle-stars) diversity, a class recognised asthe most diverse among echinoderms. A total of 33 species were documented, increasing the known species richness ofthe island by 56%. Findings include 15 new records for Réunion, 11 for the Mascarene Islands and 8 for the Indian Ocean.The most diverse family was Ophiocomidae, a family of large, abundant and conspicuous tropical species. Even in thiswell studied family, a new species was revealed by this survey. Morphological variants together with DNA sequence variationswithin several species revealed cryptic species. We compared our results with the known fauna of other MascareneIslands and discuss biogeographic implications for the region.
ISSN: 1175-5326

hal-01327053
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01327053
DOI : 10.11646/zootaxa.4098.2.4

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Station Biologique
Résumé : International audience
From fish samplings (rotenone: 6 February 2002 & 13 May 2003; boxtraps: January 2008 to July 2009) in amangrove lagoon, the demographic structure, reproductive period and diet of Lophogobius cyprinoides were studied.Individual fish were measured (< 1 mm), weighed (± 0.01 g), and sexed by observing the urogenital papilla, sex-ratios andtotal length (TL)-standard length and length-mass relationships were calculated. Five individuals per size class (2 mm) wereused to study sexual maturity by macroscopic observation of gonad structure with a sexual maturity scale, and diet byqualitative and quantitative examination of digestive tract contents and calculation of the following indices: levels offullness and vacuity; occurrence, number, and point frequencies of various food items, and quality of nutrition. Growth isisometric and sexual dimorphism in favor of males (78 vs. 64 mm), demographic structure (18 ≤ TL ≤ 78 mm) and conditionevolved over time, with a distinct femininization of the population. Sexual inversion appeared from 46 mm onward, andtotal masculinization at 72 mm. Protogynous hermaphrodism is advantageous in a sedentary, subcryptobenthic species thatis reproductively active almost throughout the year. The species has an omnivorous diet specialized in copepods and plants
ISSN: 0007-9723

hal-00746079
https://hal.univ-antilles.fr/hal-00746079

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
The identification and economic valuation of ecosystem services (ES) are becoming important components of coral reef management. In many contexts, protection of human assets against coastal floods is one of the most important ES provided by coral reefs. The methods utilized to characterize this ES should be able to accommodate situations with low data availability, without sacrificing robustness. In this paper, we suggest such an approach that utilizes expert opinion and does not require copious amounts of data. Our primary objective is to find a balance between simple and complex models that can be used in a data scarce environment, to produce an economic valuation of the coral reef ES of protection against coastal floods. The approach has three steps: (i) identify geographic zones and assets at risk, (ii) identify the contributing role of coral reefs in the protection of coasts and, (iii) value the annual repair costs of assets through the avoided damage cost approach. The proposed method seems appropriate for advocacy with policy makers, but appears to be less effective for small scale approaches, such as those required for Payment for ES negotiations or marine spatial planning.
Ecosystem Services

hal-01359394
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01359394
DOI : 10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.07.005

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Cambridge University Press
Résumé : International audience
Genetic variation was examined in two complex cases of Indo-Pacific pygmy angelfishes (genus Centropyge; Pomacanthidae). The lemonpeel pygmy angelfish C. flavissima (Cuvier and Valenciennes) has a geographically disjunct Indian vs. Pacific distribution and the individuals from these two regions differ by their colour patterns. Previous research on C. flavissima has shown mitochondrial introgression from two related species, C. eibli in the eastern Indian Ocean and C. vrolikii in the Pacific Ocean. Using the 16S rDNA and the CO1 gene as phylogeographic markers, we found no mitochondrial haplotypes in common between Indian Ocean C. flavissima and C. eibli, confirming partial genetic isolation, albeit recent. Also, we found substantial genetic differences between Indian and Pacific C. flavissima populations at the nuclear ETS-2 intron locus. The Indian Ocean form of C. flavissima, thus geographically isolated by >2000 km distance from its Pacific Ocean counterpart, is described as a new species, Centropyge cocosensis sp. nov. Centropyge cocosensis sp. nov. differs in appearance from C. flavissima in having a conspicuous blue iris and a fainter, bluish eye ring. We also found that the yellow pygmy angelfish C. heraldi Woods and Schultz consists of two genetically distinct entities, one distributed widely in the northern tropical Indo-West Pacific, the other distributed in the southern Pacific Ocean. The name originally given to the blackfin pygmy angelfish, C. woodheadi Kuiter, is here resurrected to designate the latter.
EISSN: 1755-2672

hal-01340521
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01340521
DOI : 10.1007/s12526-016-0509-y

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Public Library of Science
Résumé : International audience
Anthropogenic impacts are increasingly affecting the world's oceans. Networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) provide an option for increasing the ecological and economic benefits often provided by single MPAs. It is vital to empirically assess the effects of MPA networks and to prioritize the monitoring data necessary to explain those effects. We summarize the types of MPA networks based on their intended management outcomes and illustrate a framework for evaluating whether a connectivity network is providing an outcome greater than the sum of individual MPA effects. We use an analysis of an MPA network in Hawai'i to compare networked MPAs to non-networked MPAs to demonstrate results consistent with a network effect. We assert that planning processes for MPA networks should identify their intended outcomes while also employing coupled field monitoring-simulation modeling approaches, a powerful way to prioritize the most relevant monitoring data for empirically assessing MPA network performance.
ISSN: 1932-6203

Droits : http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
hal-01341695
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01341695
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01341695/document
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01341695/file/journal.pone.0102298.PDF
DOI : 10.1371/journal.pone.0102298

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Ecological Society of America
Résumé : Reliable assessment of fish origin is of critical importance for exploited species, since nursery areas must be identified and protected to maintain recruitment to the adult stock. During the last two decades, otolith chemical signatures (or "fingerprints") have been increasingly used as tools to discriminate between coastal habitats. However, correct assessment of fish origin from otolith fingerprints depends on various environmental and methodological parameters, including the choice of the statistical method used to assign fish to unknown origin. Among the available methods of classification, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is the most frequently used, although it assumes data are multivariate normal with homogeneous within-group dispersions, conditions that are not always met by otolith chemical data, even after transformation. Other less constrained classification methods are available, but there is a current lack of comparative analysis in applications to otolith microchemistry. Here, we assessed stock identification accuracy for four classification methods (LDA, Quadratic Discriminant Analysis [QDA], Random Forests [RF], and Artificial Neural Networks [ANN]), through the use of three distinct data sets. In each case, all possible combinations of chemical elements were examined to identify the elements to be used for optimal accuracy in fish assignment to their actual origin. Our study shows that accuracy differs according to the model and the number of elements considered. Best combinations did not include all the elements measured, and it was not possible to define an ad hoc multielement combination for accurate site discrimination. Among all the models tested, RF and ANN performed best, especially for complex data sets (e. g., with numerous fish species and/or chemical elements involved). However, for these data, RF was less time-consuming and more interpretable than ANN, and far more efficient and less demanding in terms of assumptions than LDA or QDA. Therefore, when LDA and QDA assumptions cannot be reached, the use of machine learning methods, such as RF, should be preferred for stock assessment and nursery identification based on otolith microchemistry, especially when data set include multispecific otolith signatures and/or many chemical elements.
ISSN: 1051-0761

hal-00644549
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00644549
DOI : 10.1890/09-1887.1

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer International Publishing
Résumé : International audience
15th French-Japanese Oceanography Symposium of Oceanography “Marine Productivity, Perturbations and Resilience of Socio-Ecosystems

ISBN : 978-3-319-13878-7-38
hal-01212907
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01212907

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
Coral reefs are increasingly being altered by a myriad of anthropogenic activities and natural disturbances. Long-term studies offer unique opportunities to understand how multiple and recurrent disturbances can influence coral reef resilience and long-term dynamics. While the long-term dynamics of coral assemblages have been extensively documented, the long-term dynamics of coral reef fish assemblages have received less attention. Here, we describe the changes in fish assemblages on Tiahura reef, Moorea, from 1979 to 2011. During this 33-yr period, Tiahura was exposed to multiple disturbances (crown-of-thorns seastar outbreaks and cyclones) that caused recurrent declines and recoveries of coral cover and changes in the dominant coral genera. These shifts in coral composition were associated with long-term cascading effects on fish assemblages. The composition and trophic structure of fish assemblages continuously shifted without returning to their initial composition, whereas fish species richness remained stable, albeit with a small increase over time. We detected nonlinear responses of fish density when corals were most degraded. When coral cover dropped below 10 % following a severe crown-of-thorns sea star outbreak, the density of most fish trophic groups sharply decreased. Our study shows that historical contingency may potentially be an important but largely underestimated factor explaining the contemporary structure of reef fish assemblages and suggests that temporal stability in their structure and function should not necessarily be the target of management strategies that aim at increasing or maintaining coral reef resilience.
ISSN: 0722-4028

hal-01282725
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01282725
DOI : 10.1007/s00338-015-1371-2

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Laboratoire Arago
Résumé : International audience
Some coral reefs are threatened around the world due to the effects of coastaldevelopment, over-fishing and multiple factors associated with global climate change. In 2013,a monitoring programme was implemented in Western Samoa to document changes in reef communitiesand the impacts of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Underwater visual surveysreported the first data on coral cover on the north coast of Western Samoa. Between 2013 and2015, all living coral genera (Acropora, Leptoria, Montipora, Platygyra, Pocillopora) droppedfrom 42 % to 0 %. The interaction of crown-of-thorns startfish outbreak in 2010-2014 andunusually high temperature in 2015 could have acted as a deathly combination for the coralreefs in Western Samoa.
ISSN: 0240-8759

hal-01416776
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01416776

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Wiley-Blackwell
Résumé : International audience
Understanding the distribution of genetic diversity in the light of past demographic events linked with climatic shifts will help to forecast evolutionary trajectories of ecosystems within the current context of climate change. In this study, mitochondrial sequences and microsatellite loci were analysed using traditional population genetic approaches together with Bayesian dating and the more recent approximate Bayesian computation scenario testing. The genetic structure and demographic history of a commercial fish, the black scorpionfish, Scorpaena porcus, was investigated throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The results suggest that the species recently underwent population expansions, in both seas, likely concomitant with the warming period following the Last Glacial Maximum, 20 000 years ago. A weak contemporaneous genetic differentiation was identified between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. However, the genetic diversity was similar for populations of the two seas, suggesting a high number of colonizers entered the Black Sea during the interglacial period and/or the presence of a refugial population in the Black Sea during the glacial period. Finally, within seas, an east/west genetic differentiation in the Adriatic seems to prevail, whereas the Black Sea does not show any structured spatial genetic pattern of its population. Overall, these results suggest that the Black Sea is not that isolated from the Mediterranean, and both seas revealed similar evolutionary patterns related to climate change and changes in sea level.
ISSN: 1471-8278

hal-01330323
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01330323
DOI : 10.1111/mec.13616