Publication Date:
2020-11-03
Description:
Whereas the anthropogenic impact on marine biodiversity is undebated, the
quantification and prediction of this change are not trivial. Simple traditional
measures of biodiversity (e.g. richness, diversity indices) do not capture the
magnitude and direction of changes in species or functional composition. In
this paper, we apply recently developed methods for measuring biodiversity
turnover to time-series data of four broad taxonomic groups from two
coastal regions: the southern North Sea (Germany) and the South African
coast. Both areas share geomorphological features and ecosystem types,
allowing for a critical assessment of the most informative metrics of biodiversity
change across organism groups. We found little evidence for
directional trends in univariate metrics of diversity for either the effective
number of taxa or the amount of richness change. However, turnover in
composition was high (on average nearly 30% of identities when addressing
presence or absence of species) and even higher when taking the relative
dominance of species into account. This turnover accumulated over time
at similar rates across regions and organism groups. We conclude that biodiversity
metrics responsive to turnover provide a more accurate reflection
of community change relative to conventional metrics (absolute richness
or relative abundance) and are spatially broadly applicable.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Integrative research perspectives
on marine conservation’.
Repository Name:
EPIC Alfred Wegener Institut
Type:
Article
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isiRev
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