Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are increasingly used for biodiversity conservation and the management of sustainable fisheries. The use of taxonomic surrogates in routine monitoring of the reserve effects on fish assemblages may represent a promising method due to its substantial technical and economic benefits. However, higher taxonomic ranks should be used as surrogates with caution, especially for fish, where the approach is still virtually undocumented. This study aims to shed light on relationships between taxonomic relatedness and ecological similarity, which is crucial to assess the relevance of species surrogacy to reflect species-level information and detect changes in fish related to protection regimes. By analyzing data from a Mediterranean MPA, we show that rather being related to taxonomic relationships, the ability of higher taxa to reflect species-level patterns was explained in terms of aggregation level and distribution of species within taxa. Null models using random aggregations of species were created to identify the best surrogates able to depict changes in responses of assemblages to protection observed at the species-level. Comparison of null model predictions with the more classical higher-taxon approach revealed that the latter was not reliable because, unlike null model outcomes, surrogates determined empirically were not relevant for other subsequent independent monitoring. The effectiveness of species surrogates to depict changes in responses of assemblages to protection observed at the species-level depended (1) on the numerical resolution of the aggregation and (2) the magnitude of differences between protected and unprotected locations. Such findings suggest that surrogacy approaches may be applied for routine monitoring of Mediterranean reef fish communities, although mere empirical determinations of sufficient taxonomy seems to be not reliable, legitimizing the use of alternative methods based on null models. Guidelines for the careful use of species surrogacy in the ecological evaluation of MPAs on fish assemblages are provided.
ISSN: 0006-3207

hal-01174428
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01174428
DOI : 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.06.002

Éditeur(s) : Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd
Résumé : Scientific fisheries surveys routinely identify a large diversity of commercial and non-commercial benthic megainvertebrates that could provide useful information for Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) descriptors. Species is obviously the basic taxonomic level to which most ecological studies and theories refer. Identification at this level of organization is indeed always preferred over any other taxonomic level. Nevertheless, aggregation of species to higher taxonomic levels may be unavoidable sometimes, since errors of identification are known or suspected to occur in many surveys. Using analyses of taxonomic sufficiency (identification of organisms at various taxonomic resolutions) and groups of morphospecies (taxa identified easily by non-experts on the basis of evident morphological traits), this study aims to quantify the loss of ecological information incurred by partial identification of benthic megafauna in bottom trawl surveys in order to put such data to good use. The analyses were conducted on five scientific surveys representing a large range of geographical areas (from 150 km2 to 150 000 km2) and environmental conditions. Results show that genus, family and, particularly, morphospecies are good surrogates for species identification in community analyses. We suggest that bottom trawl surveys can provide reliable megafauna data that may usefully complete those obtained by grab surveys. The use of morphospecies could lead to new strategies, combining different datasets to provide indicators for MSFD descriptors (e.g. D6).
Continental Shelf Research (0278-4343) (Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd), 2014-01 , Vol. 72 , P. 1-9

Droits : 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00162/27309/25538.pdf
DOI:10.1016/j.csr.2013.10.015
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00162/27309/

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD American Arachnological Society
Résumé : To obtain a reliable description of spider communities, robust sampling protocols are crucial. However, it remains unclear if descriptions of spider communities in tropical habitats require both day and night sampling. Here we tested whether sampling both day and night in high and low vegetation strata would lead to better diversity estimates of spider communities than sampling at only one period of the day. We determined spider taxonomic diversity in a network of 12 plots in French Guiana along a vegetation gradient. We found high alpha diversity of spiders as expected for a tropical area at every site. We showed strong differences in spider alpha and beta diversity between high and low vegetation strata, while they were similar between day and night sampling. Our results suggest that collecting spiders at only one period is sufficient to describe the diversity of spider communities across land use types in the neotropics.
ISSN: 0161-8202

hal-01535342
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01535342
PRODINRA : 346667