No abstract

No abstract

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

Shallow coral reef ecosystems worldwide are affected by local and global anthropogenic stressors. Exploring fish assemblages on deeper reefs is therefore important to examine their connectivity, and to help understand the biodiversity, ecology, distinctiveness, evolutionary history and threats in this sparsely studied environment. Conducting visual surveys on the Bermuda slope and a nearby seamount at depths from 15 to 300 m, we document decreasing fish biomass and diversity with increasing depth. Fish assemblages were primarily depth-stratified, with distinct suites of species inhabiting shallow (<30 m depth) and upper (60 m) and lower (90 m) mesophotic coral ecosystems, and confirming the presence of a distinct rariphotic (∼150-300 m) assemblage. We also report evidence of anthropogenic pressures throughout our surveyed depths. Our results highlight the novelty of deeper reef fish faunas, therefore suggesting limited applicability of the deep reef refuge hypothesis, and showcase the vulnerability of deep reefs to targeted fishing pressure and invasive species.

Video and image data are regularly used in the field of benthic ecology to document biodiversity. However, their use is subject to a number of challenges, principally the identification of taxa within the images without associated physical specimens. The challenge of applying traditional taxonomic keys to the identification of fauna from images has led to the development of personal, group, or institution level reference image catalogues of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) or morphospecies. Lack of standardisation among these reference catalogues has led to problems with observer bias and the inability to combine datasets across studies. In addition, lack of a common reference standard is stifling efforts in the application of artificial intelligence to taxon identification. Using the North Atlantic deep sea as a case study, we propose a database structure to facilitate standardisation of morphospecies image catalogues between research groups and support future use in multiple front-end applications. We also propose a framework for coordination of international efforts to develop reference guides for the identification of marine species from images. The proposed structure maps to the Darwin Core standard to allow integration with existing databases. We suggest a management framework where high-level taxonomic groups are curated by a regional team, consisting of both end users and taxonomic experts. We identify a mechanism by which overall quality of data within a common reference guide could be raised over the next decade. Finally, we discuss the role of a common reference standard in advancing marine ecology and supporting sustainable use of this ecosystem.

Worldwide coral reefs face catastrophic damage due to a series of anthropogenic stressors. Investigating how coral reefs ecosystems are connected, in particular across depth, will help us understand if deeper reefs harbour distinct communities. Here, we explore changes in benthic community structure across 15–300 m depths using technical divers and submersibles around Bermuda. We report high levels of floral and faunal differentiation across depth, with distinct assemblages occupying each depth surveyed, except 200–300 m, corresponding to the lower rariphotic zone. Community turnover was highest at the boundary depths of mesophotic coral ecosystems (30–150 m) driven largely by taxonomic turnover and to a lesser degree by ordered species loss (nestedness). Our work highlights the biologically unique nature of benthic communities in the mesophotic and rariphotic zones, and their limited connectivity to shallow reefs, thus emphasizing the need to manage and protect deeper reefs as distinct entities.

The ocean plays a crucial role in the functioning of the Earth System and in the provision of vital goods and services. The United Nations (UN) declared 2021–2030 as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The Roadmap for the Ocean Decade aims to achieve six critical societal outcomes (SOs) by 2030, through the pursuit of four objectives (Os). It specifically recognizes the scarcity of biological data for deep-sea biomes, and challenges the global scientific community to conduct research to advance understanding of deep-sea ecosystems to inform sustainable management. In this paper, we map four key scientific questions identified by the academic community to the Ocean Decade SOs: (i) What is the diversity of life in the deep ocean? (ii) How are populations and habitats connected? (iii) What is the role of living organisms in ecosystem function and service provision? and (iv) How do species, communities, and ecosystems respond to disturbance? We then consider the design of a global-scale program to address these questions by reviewing key drivers of ecological pattern and process. We recommend using the following criteria to stratify a global survey design: biogeographic region, depth, horizontal distance, substrate type, high and low climate hazard, fished/unfished, near/far from sources of pollution, licensed/protected from industry activities. We consider both spatial and temporal surveys, and emphasize new biological data collection that prioritizes southern and polar latitudes, deeper (&gt; 2000 m) depths, and midwater environments. We provide guidance on observational, experimental, and monitoring needs for different benthic and pelagic ecosystems. We then review recent efforts to standardize biological data and specimen collection and archiving, making “sampling design to knowledge application” recommendations in the context of a new global program. We also review and comment on needs, and recommend actions, to develop capacity in deep-sea research; and the role of inclusivity - from accessing indigenous and local knowledge to the sharing of technologies - as part of such a global program. We discuss the concept of a new global deep-sea biological research program ‘Challenger 150,’ highlighting what it could deliver for the Ocean Decade and UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.

Traditionally, fish have been neglected in pond ecology and conservation studies although it has been often been assumed that they have a detrimental impact on pond biodiversity and ecosystem function. In order to assess the consequences of fish for pond biodiversity and ecosystem structure we sampled a set of 40 small farmland ponds (20 with and 20 without fish) in eastern England and compared their water chemistry as well as the assemblage characteristics (abundance, diversity, species composition) of three biological groups: cladocerans (zooplankton), water beetles and macrophytes. Water depth was significantly greater in fish ponds, while pond bottom oxygen levels and pH were significantly higher in the ponds without fish. The presence of fish significantly reduced the abundance of macrophytes and altered the community composition of cladocerans and macrophytes, but had no detectable influence on water beetles. Variation partitioning using environmental and spatial variables, indicated all three biological groups were spatially structured. The inclusion of fish however, reduced the importance attributed to space in the case of both cladocerans and macrophytes, suggesting that space effects for these two groups were at least partly the result of a spatially structured predator (i.e. fish) and not because of dispersal limitation or mass effects. In most cases fish did not have an effect on cladoceran and water beetle alpha diversity (number of species, Shannon's and Simpson's index), although the opposite was true for macrophytes. Nevertheless, at the landscape level, gamma diversity (i.e. total number of species) was enhanced for all three biological groups. Our results suggest that fish, at least small pond-associated species, are an important component of heterogeneity in farmland pond networks, thereby increasing landscapescale diversity of several faunal and floral elements. Consequently, we propose that fish should be more fully included in future pond biodiversity surveys and conservation strategies.