4.7 Article

Functional traits provide new insight into recovery and succession at deep-sea hydrothermal vents

Journal

ECOLOGY
Volume 102, Issue 8, Pages -

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3418

Keywords

benthic invertebrates; disturbance; functional traits; hydrothermal vents; recovery; succession

Categories

Funding

  1. NSF [OCE-1829773]
  2. Synthesis Centre of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (sDiv)

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The study of invertebrate communities in deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems revealed unique succession dynamics where large, fast-growing organisms colonized rapidly, and small, asexually reproducing organisms appeared later. Changes in traits related to feeding ecology and dispersal potential over succession were consistent with expectations from other ecosystems.
Investigation of communities in extreme environments with unique conditions has the potential to broaden or challenge existing theory as to how biological communities assemble and change through succession. Deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems have strong, parallel gradients of nutrients and environmental stress, and present unusual conditions in early succession, in that both nutrient availability and stressors are high. We analyzed the succession of the invertebrate community at 9 degrees 50 ' N on the East Pacific Rise for 11 yr following an eruption in 2006 in order to test successional theories developed in other ecosystems. We focused on functional traits including body size, external protection, provision of habitat (foundation species), and trophic mode to understand how the unique nutritional and stress conditions influence community composition. In contrast to established theory, large, fast-growing, structure-forming organisms colonized rapidly at vents, while small, asexually reproducing organisms were not abundant until later in succession. Species in early succession had high external protection, as expected in the harsh thermal and chemical conditions after the eruption. Changes in traits related to feeding ecology and dispersal potential over succession agreed with expectations from other ecosystems. We also tracked functional diversity metrics over time to see how they compared to species diversity. While species diversity peaked at 8 yr post-eruption, functional diversity was continuing to increase at 11 yr. Our results indicate that deep-sea hydrothermal vents have distinct successional dynamics due to the high stress and high nutrient conditions in early succession. These findings highlight the importance of extending theory to new systems and considering function to allow comparison between ecosystems with different species and environmental conditions.

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