Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Inter-Research
Résumé : International audience
Ecological connectivity is important for effective marine planning and biodiversity conservation. Our aim was to identify factors important in influencing variation in benthic community structure on shallow rocky reefs in 2 regions of the Mediterranean Sea with contrasting oceanographic regimes. We assessed beta (β) diversity at 146 sites in the littoral and shallow sub-littoral from the Adriatic/Ionian Seas (eastern region) and Ligurian/Tyrrhenian Seas (western region) using a null modelling approach to account for variation in species richness. The distance decay relationship between species turnover within each region and geographic distance by sea was determined using generalised linear models. Mantel tests were used to examine correlations between β diversity and connectivity by ocean currents, estimated from Lagrangian dispersal simulations. Variation in β diversity between sites was partitioned according to environmental and spatial components using a distance-based redundancy approach. Species turnover along a gradient of geographic distance was greater by a factor of 3 to 5 in the western region than the eastern region, suggesting lower con-nectivity between sites. β diversity was correlated with connectivity by ocean currents at both depths in the eastern region but not in the western region. The influence of spatial and environmental predictors of β diversity varied considerably between regions, but was similar between depths. Our results highlight the interaction of oceanographic, spatial and environmental processes influencing benthic marine β diversity. Persistent currents in the eastern region may be responsible for lower observed β diversity compared to the western region, where patterns of water circulation are more variable.
Marine Ecology Progress Series

Droits : http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
hal-01357935
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01357935
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01357935/document
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01357935/file/m553p001.pdf
DOI : 10.3354/meps11783

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Frontiers Media
Résumé : International audience
With global climate change altering marine ecosystems, research on plankton ecology is likely to navigate uncharted seas. Yet, a staggering wealth of new plankton observations, integrated with recent advances in marine ecosystem modelling, may shed light on marine ecosystem structure and functioning. A EuroMarine foresight workshop on the “Impact of climate change on the distribution of plankton functional and phylogenetic diversity” (PlankDiv) identified five grand challenges for future plankton diversity and macroecology research: 1) What can we learn about plankton communities from the new wealth of high-throughput ‘omics’ data? 2) What is the link between plankton diversity and ecosystem function? 3) How can species distribution models be adapted to represent plankton biogeography? 4) How will plankton biogeography be altered due to anthropogenic climate change? and 5) Can a new unifying theory of macroecology be developed based on plankton ecology studies? In this review, we discuss potential future avenues to address these questions, and challenges that need to be tackled along the way.
ISSN: 2296-7745

hal-01545318
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01545318
DOI : 10.3389/fmars.2017.00068