Environmental drivers of rhodolith beds and epiphytes community along the South Western Atlantic coast

Carvalho, Vanessa Freire de; Assis, Jorge; Serrão, Ester Á.; Nunes, José Marcos C.; Anderson, Antônio B.; Batista, Manuela Bernardes; Barufi, José Bonomi; Silva, João; Pereira, Sônia Maria Barreto; Horta, Paulo Antunes

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2019.104827

Cited by 41 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 118 publications

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“…High resolution maps can be found in Supplementary Material. benthic predictors was used to achieve the best possible predictions at global scales (Carvalho et al, 2020). Our approach successfully identified well-known rhodolith banks, such as those in the northern Atlantic, Mediterranean, Caribbean, Australia and Brazil (Steller et al, 2003;Hall-Spencer et al, 2010;Amado-Filho et al, 2012a;Basso et al, 2016;Harvey et al, 2017), as well as recently discovered ones (e.g., South Africa; Adams et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Models showed that the distribution of rhodoliths is mainly shaped by light availability (above a minimum threshold), maximum and minimum temperature and pH (above a minimum threshold); environmental predictors that are directly linked with the physiology of photosynthetic calcifying organisms (Carvalho et al, 2020). While at the species level, limiting thresholds differ between rhodolith species (Martin and Hall-Spencer, 2017), our aim was a modelbased inference of suitable habitats for the warm and cold rhodolith biomes (e.g., Jayathilake and Costello, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, as rhodolith genetic and species diversity are still greatly underestimated (Twist et al, 2019;Caragnano et al, 2020), putative diversity losses may occur undetected, leading to potentially misperceived assessments of the rhodolith biome diversity and phylogeography, and gene pool conservation status (i.e., shifting genetic baselines; Assis et al, 2014). The exact ramifications of climate change on rhodolith ecosystems are hard to predict, as new insights on their role as bio-engineers and their complex relationships with associated species are only starting to be discovered (Steller et al, 2003;Horta et al, 2016;Gabara et al, 2018;Fredericq et al, 2019;Carvalho et al, 2020). For example, recent insights indicate that rhodoliths may be functioning as banks of microscopic stages (equivalent to seedbanks) for marine biodiversity, safeguarding species after local environmental stress incidents, as in the case of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (Fredericq et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to examine the potential consequences of future climate change on the rhodolith biome, a set of environmental predictors were selected based on their biological relevance to the rhodolith physiology (Carvalho et al, 2020). Benthic predictors for the annual average values of temperature (minimum and maximum), pH, light, nitrate, phosphate, salinity and currents, were downloaded from Bio-ORACLE (Tyberghein et al, 2012;Assis et al, 2017b) for the present and for two contrasting best and worst future scenarios: the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 characterized by a large reduction of greenhouse emissions over time and RCP 8.5, where emissions are predicted to continue to increase over time (Moss et al, 2010).…”

Section: Environmental and Occurrence Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bottom Trawling Threatens Future Climate Refugia of Rhodoliths Globally

et al. 2021

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Climate driven range shifts are driving the redistribution of marine species and threatening the functioning and stability of marine ecosystems. For species that are the structural basis of marine ecosystems, such effects can be magnified into drastic loss of ecosystem functioning and resilience. Rhodoliths are unattached calcareous red algae that provide key complex three-dimensional habitats for highly diverse biological communities. These globally distributed biodiversity hotspots are increasingly threatened by ongoing environmental changes, mainly ocean acidification and warming, with wide negative impacts anticipated in the years to come. These are superimposed upon major local stressors caused by direct destructive impacts, such as bottom trawling, which act synergistically in the deterioration of the rhodolith ecosystem health and function. Anticipating the potential impacts of future environmental changes on the rhodolith biome may inform timely mitigation strategies integrating local effects of bottom trawling over vulnerable areas at global scales. This study aimed to identify future climate refugia, as regions where persistence is predicted under contrasting climate scenarios, and to analyze their trawling threat levels. This was approached by developing species distribution models with ecologically relevant environmental predictors, combined with the development of a global bottom trawling intensity index to identify heavily fished regions overlaying rhodoliths. Our results revealed the importance of light, thermal stress and pH driving the global distribution of rhodoliths. Future projections showed poleward expansions and contractions of suitable habitats at lower latitudes, structuring cryptic depth refugia, particularly evident under the more severe warming scenario RCP 8.5. Our results suggest that if management and conservation measures are not taken, bottom trawling may directly threaten the persistence of key rhodolith refugia. Since rhodoliths have slow growth rates, high sensitivity and ecological importance, understanding how their current and future distribution might be susceptible to bottom trawling pressure, may contribute to determine the fate of both the species and their associated communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmental and Occurrence Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bottom Trawling Threatens Future Climate Refugia of Rhodoliths Globally

et al. 2021

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“…Mangroves, seagrass meadows, coral reefs, sandy beaches, estuaries, bays, and deltas are important systems in the tropical and subtropical areas providing numerous ecosystem services (Barbier et al, 2011;Pascual et al, 2017;Díaz et al, 2018). Unique biodiversity with high levels of endemism is found in rhodolith beds (Calegario et al, 2020;Carvalho et al, 2020), in the coral reefs of Abrolhos (Leão et al, 2003;Mazzei et al, 2017), and in the coralline-algae Rocas Atoll, the only atoll in the SA (Gherardi and Bosence, 2001;Amado-Filho et al, 2016). The western Atlantic is also composed by four Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs), three of which are in the Brazilian coastline (North, East, and South Brazil Shelf LMEs) and a southern LME in Argentina, the Patagonian Shelf LME (Figure 1).…”

Section: Context -The South Atlantic Region Environmental Settingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pollutants in the South Atlantic Ocean: Sources, Knowledge Gaps and Perspectives for the Decade of Ocean Science

et al. 2021

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The current manuscript presents the main issues related to the “Clean Ocean” outcome that arose from the Regional South Atlantic (SA) Planning Workshop for the UN Decade of Ocean Science and five Brazilian Regional Planning Workshops. An interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral group constituted by the academia, non-governmental agencies, the private sector, decision-makers, the navy, and local communities discussed the main anthropogenic drivers compromising the current environmental status of the SA and its ecological services, and debated the main research gaps, priorities and needs for improving technical and structural capacities in order to roadmap the Brazilian actions for the Decade of Ocean Science. The aim of this review is to contribute to a social solution-driven understanding of the ocean ecosystems, to create conditions to promote sustainable development and to secure a clean, healthy ocean. We are proposing a list of actions to be implemented by the Decade of Ocean Science that will have the pivotal role to promote technical and scientific capacity development, increase research infrastructure and institutional frameworks, develop national public policies aimed at reducing the input of pollutants and management of impacts, and warranting food security and ecosystem health. The earlier the actions in controlling pollutants are implemented, along with the identification of key sources and prevention of crossing of thresholds will help to avert worst-case scenarios, reducing the socio-economic disparities of impacts across nations and social groups and supporting the sustainable development of a pollutant-free ocean.

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Morphological insights into the three-dimensional complexity of rhodolith beds

Cabrito,

de Juan,

Hinz

et al. 2024

Mar Biol

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The ecological importance of rhodolith beds stems from their role as structurally complex three-dimensional habitat formed by free-living red calcareous algae. Their structural singularity is due to the great variety of complex and branching morphologies exhibited by rhodoliths that create interstitial spaces and increase their surface area. This increases the ecological niches for cryptofauna and provide refuge for a high number of organisms, which is why rhodolith beds are considered biodiversity hotspots. In this work, we studied a rhodolith bed located in the Menorca Channel, formed by several species of red calcareous algae that exhibit a great variety of morphologies and form an extensive and heterogeneous habitat. This study explored the morphological diversity of the rhodolith bed, comparing the ‘Core Habitat’ (within the center of the bed with the highest densities of rhodoliths) with the boundaries or ‘Adjacent Habitat’ where rhodolith density was lower. Our results show that all rhodolith growth forms (branched, pralines and boxwork) in the Core Habitat had higher interstitial space and were larger than the ones from adjacent zones. Moreover, we explored the three-dimensional techniques to study the morphological characteristics that have historically been studied in two dimensions. This study contributes to the knowledge of morphological diversity in well-preserved rhodolith beds from continental shelves in the western Mediterranean Sea and reinforces the use of three-dimensional measurements, specifically the interstitial space of branched rhodoliths, to provide more accurate data on habitat complexity.

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Environmental drivers of rhodolith beds and epiphytes community along the South Western Atlantic coast

Cited by 41 publications

References 118 publications

Bottom Trawling Threatens Future Climate Refugia of Rhodoliths Globally

Bottom Trawling Threatens Future Climate Refugia of Rhodoliths Globally

Pollutants in the South Atlantic Ocean: Sources, Knowledge Gaps and Perspectives for the Decade of Ocean Science

Morphological insights into the three-dimensional complexity of rhodolith beds

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