Article
Biology
Faye Moyes, Isaac Trindade-Santos, Anne E. E. Magurran
Summary: Recent research has shown rapid reorganization in ecological assemblages, especially in marine ecosystems. However, it is not well understood how changes in taxonomic diversity correspond to changes in functional diversity. This study analyzed 30 years of trawl data and found that taxonomic rarity aligns with changes in assemblage size, while functional rarity actually increases with larger assemblages. These findings highlight the significance of assessing both taxonomic and functional dimensions when studying biodiversity change.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Jeroen Steenbeek, Joe Buszowski, David Chagaris, Villy Christensen, Marta Coll, Elizabeth A. Fulton, Stelios Katsanevakis, Kristy A. Lewis, Antonios D. Mazaris, Diego Macias, Kim de Mutsert, Greig Oldford, Maria Grazia Pennino, Chiara Piroddi, Giovanni Romagnoni, Natalia Serpetti, Yunne-Jai Shin, Michael A. Spence, Vanessa Stelzenmueller
Summary: Marine Ecosystem Models (MEMs) provide a deeper understanding of marine ecosystem dynamics, but are underutilized in policy arenas due to lack of formal validation and uncertainty quantifications. Addressing technical issues and proposing a simple, scalable conceptual solution is key to increasing the usefulness of MEMs.
ENVIRONMENTAL MODELLING & SOFTWARE
(2021)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Joao Bosco Gusmao, David W. Thieltges, Rob Dekker, Laura L. Govers, Kasper J. Meijer, Britas Klemens Eriksson
Summary: The rapid reorganization of global biodiversity has prompted research on the consequences for ecosystem functioning. Efforts to monitor biodiversity change and evaluate its outcomes for ecosystems are currently misaligned. Using macrozoobenthic communities from the Dutch Wadden Sea as a model, this study investigated the relationship between trait diversity and function across sediment gradients. The findings highlight the value of a trait-based approach in complementing traditional biodiversity measures for characterizing changes in ecosystem functioning.
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Germain Boussarie, Dorothee Kopp, Gael Lavialle, Maud Mouchet, Marie Morfin
Summary: Direct and indirect anthropogenic pressures are expected to lower the provided ecosystem services in the future. Protected areas and renewable energies are being implemented to address these impacts. However, sharing space between offshore wind farms (OWFs), marine protected areas (MPAs), and fisheries is challenging due to low acceptability and underrepresentation of fisheries. In this study, a marine spatial planning framework was developed to explore siting scenarios that conserve species, regulate ecosystem services, and ensure equitable impacts on fisheries.
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
(2023)
Article
Biology
Sarah R. Weiskopf, Bonnie J. E. Myers, Maria Isabel Arce-Plata, Julia L. Blanchard, Simon Ferrier, Elizabeth A. Fulton, Mike Harfoot, Forest Isbell, Justin A. Johnson, Akira S. Mori, Ensheng Weng, Zuzana Harmackova, Maria Cecilia Londono-Murcia, Brian W. Miller, Laura M. Pereira, Isabel M. D. Rosa
Summary: Global biodiversity and ecosystem service models often operate independently, leading to overly optimistic projections of ecosystem services. In order to bridge the gap between biodiversity changes and ecosystem services, we propose two integration pathways and emphasize the need to integrate biodiversity, ecosystem function, and ecosystem service modeling to enhance global sustainability goals.
Article
Biology
Luke E. Holman, Shirley Parker-Nance, Mark de Bruyn, Simon Creer, Gary Carvalho, Marc Rius
Summary: The combined methodological approach effectively detected spatial and temporal variation in genetic composition and range size of non-native species, which is crucial for their management and conservation.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Biology
Liam J. Hughes, Oscar Morton, Brett R. Scheffers, David P. Edwards
Summary: Wildlife trade is a major driver of species extinction risk, affecting a significant proportion of terrestrial vertebrates. This trade-driven selection has far-reaching ecological implications, including direct effects on natural selection and populations of traded species, as well as wider ecosystem repercussions. Conservation actions to address wildlife trade need to be multi-faceted, encompassing regulatory and enforcement approaches, community-based interventions, captive breeding or wildlife farming, and conservation translocations and trophic rewilding. It is crucial to consider the broader consequences for other species and ecosystem processes when evaluating the sustainability of exploitation.
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
(2023)
Review
Oceanography
Di Sun, Zhao Jing, Furong Li, Lixin Wu
Summary: Extreme warm water events known as Marine Heatwaves (MHWs) have adverse impacts on ecosystems and economies. Currently, MHW events are defined based on temperature timeseries at a single location, which limits their characterization of spatial structures. This study extends the definition of MHW events to include their spatial and temporal characteristics, and introduces a set of metrics to measure these characteristics. Applying the new definition to observational sea surface temperature data reveals that MHW events are affected by duration, spatial extent, and intensity, and their frequency and strength have increased due to anthropogenic warming.
PROGRESS IN OCEANOGRAPHY
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Kjell Grip, Sven Blomqvist
Summary: Globally, ecosystem-based marine spatial planning plays a key role in coordinating different authorities to balance the diverse requirements in managing marine areas and space. Ecology sets limits on acceptable human activities and multiple aspects must be considered in the planning process. A more holistic, multi-sectoral, and coordinated approach is needed for successful marine planning and management, challenging traditional sector division and calling for better coordinated marine policies.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Duncan A. O'Brien, Gideon Gal, Stephen J. Thackeray, Shin-ichiro S. Matsuzaki, Christopher F. Clements
Summary: Managing ecosystems requires reliable tools to infer system stability and dynamics. Functional diversity (FD) is an important measure of biodiversity that is conceptually linked to ecological processes. However, it is unclear whether changes in FD occur before or after changes in system state. In this study, we investigated the lagged relationship between planktonic FD and abundance-based metrics in five lake communities. The results show that FD and lake state display synchrony, but the strength of the relationship varies between lakes. Changes in FD may not be identifiable before changes in easily collected abundance metrics. Empirical dynamic modelling is a powerful tool for understanding time lagged relationships in complex ecosystems.
GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Fisheries
L. C. Flensborg, A. A. Maureaud, D. N. Bravo, M. Lindegren
Summary: Marine ecosystems are at risk due to climate change, overexploitation, and habitat destruction, causing loss of species and biodiversity. Maximizing resilience has become crucial in conservation and management. This study quantifies the potential resilience of marine ecosystems using the North Sea as a case study, highlighting a trade-off between different components of resilience.
ICES JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE
(2023)
Review
Ecology
Qianna Xu, Xian Yang, Ying Yan, Shaopeng Wang, Michel Loreau, Lin Jiang
Summary: The study found that species diversity can enhance ecosystem-level temporal stability, regardless of the system being terrestrial or aquatic. Increasing diversity promotes asynchrony, which in turn increases ecosystem stability. However, species diversity tends to reduce population temporal stability in terrestrial systems while increasing it in aquatic systems.
Review
Ecology
Mathew A. Leibold, Lynn Govaert, Nicolas Loeuille, Luc De Meester, Mark C. Urban
Summary: The finding that adaptive evolution can often significantly impact ecological dynamics challenges traditional perspectives that ignore evolution in community ecology. This study proposes that evolution frequently alters both local and regional processes of community assembly, showing how adaptation can greatly affect community composition and that this is influenced by regional factors such as environmental heterogeneity and spatial structure.
ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECOLOGY EVOLUTION AND SYSTEMATICS
(2022)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Deqiang Ma, Jonathan R. Rhodes, Martine Maron
Summary: This study examines how different rules for siting coastal offsets can impact fisheries resources, providing insights for optimizing offset strategies.
JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Biology
Simone Cesarz, Nico Eisenhauer, Solveig Franziska Bucher, Marcel Ciobanu, Jes Hines
Summary: The use of artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasing worldwide, but its impact on the soil system has not been studied. This research shows that increasing ALAN reduces plant biomass and decreases soil water content. Soil respiration is further reduced under high ALAN, but microbial communities maintain stable biomass and exhibit higher carbon use efficiency. While ALAN does not affect microbial community structure, plant-feeding nematodes increase in abundance and nematode communities become more homogenous under higher ALAN levels, suggesting that soil communities may be more vulnerable to additional disturbances. In summary, ALAN alters soil communities and ecosystem functions, mediated by changes in plant productivity and soil water content.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Marine & Freshwater Biology
Inge Christensen, Lisbeth Kjaereby Pedersen, Martin Sondergaard, Torben L. Lauridsen, Sh Tserenpil, Katherine Richardson, Cihelio A. Amorim, Juan Pablo Pacheco, Erik Jeppesen
Summary: This study provides experimental evidence for the significant grazing effect of zooplankton on phytoplankton in brackish lakes, especially at low fish density and salinities below 8 parts per thousand. However, grazing in summer was generally low in most lakes, likely due to high predation pressure on zooplankton.
Review
Fisheries
Jess Melbourne-Thomas, Desiree Tommasi, Marion Gehlen, Eugene J. Murphy, Jennifer Beckensteiner, Francisco Bravo, Tyler D. Eddy, Mibu Fischer, Elizabeth Fulton, Mayya Gogina, Eileen Hofmann, Maysa Ito, Sara Mynott, Kelly Ortega-Cisneros, Anna N. Osiecka, Mark R. Payne, Romeo Saldivar-Lucio, Kim J. N. Scherrer
Summary: Significant progress has been made in ocean physics and biogeochemistry research, especially regarding decadal-scale prediction, over the past years. However, incorporating human factors into predictions still poses challenges. This paper proposes methods to overcome these challenges and emphasizes the importance of co-production of tools and scenarios to establish trust and ensure adoption of decadal prediction systems by end users. Furthermore, combining narratives and quantitative predictions can better incorporate the human dimension in future efforts to advance decadal-scale prediction.
ICES JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Jorgen Bendtsen, Clara R. Vives, Katherine Richardson
Summary: The combination of information on the vertical distribution of nutrients and remote sensing has the potential to improve estimates of ocean primary production. By using in situ observations from biogeochemical Argo floats and remote sensing, we estimated primary production and compared it with estimates based on model approaches without vertically resolved nutrient distributions. The results showed that the distribution of chlorophyll a, as well as the estimates of primary production, were closely related to both nutricline depth and latitude.
FRONTIERS IN MARINE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Fisheries
Arnaud Gruss, Jeremy R. McKenzie, Martin Lindegren, Richard Bian, Simon D. Hoyle, Jennifer A. Devine
Summary: This study utilizes spatio-temporal models to support stock assessments, focusing on the snapper stock in the northeast coast of the North Island in New Zealand. The findings suggest that snapper exhibit seasonal ecological patterns and the current stock structure assumptions are reasonable. The spatio-temporal models provide similar indices of abundance compared to standard models. However, there is a spatial shrinkage issue in estimating age proportions with the spatio-temporal models, which future studies should address through simulation experiments and sensitivity analyses.
FISHERIES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Fisheries
L. C. Flensborg, A. A. Maureaud, D. N. Bravo, M. Lindegren
Summary: Marine ecosystems are at risk due to climate change, overexploitation, and habitat destruction, causing loss of species and biodiversity. Maximizing resilience has become crucial in conservation and management. This study quantifies the potential resilience of marine ecosystems using the North Sea as a case study, highlighting a trade-off between different components of resilience.
ICES JOURNAL OF MARINE SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Fernanda C. Silva, Sergio R. Floeter, Martin Lindegren, Juan P. Quimbayo
Summary: Marine communities are influenced by natural variability and climate change, particularly sea surface temperature (SST) increase, which can affect the distribution and abundance of reef fishes and thereby alter the overall diversity, structure, and functioning of these communities. In this study, the researchers investigated the temporal variability in reef fish traits and thermal affinity, and found that shifts in fish composition were linked to SST, indicating a numerical response of species to climate variations. The results have ecological implications for community turnover, food-chain complexity, and vulnerability to change.
MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES
(2023)
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Johan Rockstroem, Katherine Richardson
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Marcel Montanyes, Benjamin Weigel, Martin Lindegren
Summary: In order to preserve natural ecosystems and biodiversity, it is important to understand the underlying drivers and assembly processes that determine community composition. This study examines the assembly processes shaping marine fish species distribution and composition in the North Sea. The researchers found that environmental filtering and spatially-structured processes are the main drivers of community assembly, and that species traits play a significant role in species responses to environmental change. Therefore, models that account for traits, environmental niches, and interactions among multiple species can inform spatial management and conservation efforts.
Article
Ecology
Antoni Vivo-Pons, Mats Blomqvist, Anna Tornroos, Martin Lindegren
Summary: This study examines the relationship and distinction between non-indigenous species (NIS) and native species by studying benthic invertebrate communities in the Baltic Sea. The results show that NIS have some similarities with native species but also possess unique characteristics. The community assembly processes have an impact on the establishment of NIS, but this impact is highly dependent on the environmental context.
Article
Ecology
Daniel van Denderen, Aurore A. Maureaud, Ken H. Andersen, Sarah Gaichas, Martin Lindegren, Colleen M. Petrik, Charles A. Stock, Jeremy Collie
Summary: Theory predicts that fish community biomass will decline with increasing temperature due to higher metabolic losses. However, whether these predictions explain observed macroecological patterns in fish community biomass is unknown. This study tests these predictions and finds that temperature is the main driver of cross-regional variation in fish community biomass.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Noemie Coulon, Martin Lindegren, Eric Goberville, Aurele Toussaint, Aurore Receveur, Arnaud Auber
Summary: The aim of this study is to investigate whether threatened species are also functionally rare and to identify which traits determine extinction risk. The results of the study show that in European continental shelf seas, 38% of the species threatened with extinction (9 out of 24 species) were identified as the most functionally distinct. The study emphasizes that species traits, especially functional rarity, should become an indispensable step in the development of conservation management plans.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2023)
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Mark R. Payne
Summary: A recent analysis of fish population data in Europe and North America has revealed an alarming increase in the occurrence of marine heatwaves, challenging our previous understanding of their ecological implications.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen, Wolfgang Lucht, Jorgen Bendtsen, Sarah E. Cornell, Jonathan F. Donges, Markus Drueke, Ingo Fetzer, Govindasamy Bala, Werner von Bloh, Georg Feulner, Stephanie Fiedler, Dieter Gerten, Tom Gleeson, Matthias Hofmann, Willem Huiskamp, Matti Kummu, Chinchu Mohan, David Nogues-Bravo, Stefan Petri, Miina Porkka, Stefan Rahmstorf, Sibyll Schaphoff, Kirsten Thonicke, Arne Tobian, Vili Virkki, Lan Wang-Erlandsson, Lisa Weber, Johan Rockstroem
Summary: This update of the planetary boundaries framework reveals that six out of the nine boundaries have been transgressed, indicating that Earth is now outside the safe operating space for humanity. The impacts of climate change and land system change on the Earth system must be considered within a systemic context.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Jorgen Bendtsen, Lykke Laura Sorensen, Niels Daugbjerg, Nina Lundholm, Katherine Richardson
Summary: The composition of phytoplankton community plays a crucial role in ecosystem structure and function. In this study, the abundance of nine closely sampled phytoplankton species was used to analyze community composition and its relationship with water movements. The results showed that connectivity, rather than geographical distance, was the key factor in explaining pelagic plankton diversity and understanding phytoplankton composition.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Antoni Vivo-Pons, Isa Wallin-Kihlberg, Jens Olsson, Peter Ljungberg, Jane Behrens, Martin Lindegren
Summary: Understanding the establishment of non-indigenous species and their interactions with native species is crucial for managing and preventing future invasions. A study on the round goby in the Baltic Sea found that it is similar to native fish species in overall trait composition, but exhibits distinct differences in parental care and territorial behavior. These individual trait differences may play a significant role in the invasive success of round goby in the Baltic Sea.
