Different responses of taxonomic and functional diversity to environmental changes: case study of fish communities in the Zhoushan fishing ground, China

Abstract

The resilience and responses of sh communities to environmental stressors have been evidenced to associated with the community structure of sh such as sh biodiversity. What remains unknown, however, is that whether different components of biodiversity responds to environmental changes consistently or differently. Traditional researches about biodiversity and its environmental drivers were mostly based on taxonomic level, and often ignored functional traits of shes. In this study, we investigated the seasonal patterns of sh biodiversity and their environmental drivers. Biodiversity indices were measured by species abundance and functional traits data, respectively and named taxonomic diversity (TD) and functional diversity (FD), respectively. Our results showed signi cant difference of sh biodiversity indices at least between two seasons with exception for functional evenness (FEve). Compared with TD, FD showed more changeable along season. Both TD and FD were signi cantly related to several environmental variables at least in one season, and the response of them to environmental changes were different. In addition, environmental variables played important roles in shaped sh community structure in the study area with eight environmental variables (i.e., salinity, temperature, nitrite, DP, IN, TN, silicate, and PO 4 3-) signi cantly related to taxonomic structure and three variables (i.e., AN, TD, and COD) signi cantly related to functional structure. These ndings provide evidence that trait-based approach is necessary when assess the responses of sh communities to environmental changes.