Methodological elements for optimising the spatial monitoring design to support regional benthic ecosystem assessments

Hoey, Gert Van; Wischnewski, Julia; Craeymeersch, Johan; Dannheim, Jennifer; Enserink, Lisette; Guérin, Laurent; Marco-Rius, Francisco; O’Connor, Joey; Reiss, Henning; Sell, Anne F.; Berghe, Marie Vanden; Zettler, Michael L.; Degraer, S.; Birchenough, Silvana N.R.

doi:10.1007/s10661-019-7550-9

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Consequently, the big challenge is to evaluate how relevant the data is for the actual purpose. A further challenge in trans-national regional assessments is that countries might have different traditions, priorities, or resources available for monitoring (Van Hoey et al 2019). This was also reflected in this study, where the review of current monitoring programmes revealed different monitoring practices between the Baltic Sea bordering countries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Benthic communities are proficient indicators of environmental changes, as changes in the community composition reflect changes in the environment (Leppäkoski 1975;Pearson and Rosenberg 1978;Dauer 1993). To detect changes in benthic communities and provide reliable status assessments at regional scale, appropriate and welldesigned monitoring programmes are needed (Van Hoey et al 2019). In the Baltic Sea, there is a >-50-year-long tradition of monitoring soft-bottom macrofauna communities, providing unique time series to study changes over time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Developing benthic monitoring programmes to support precise and representative status assessments: a case study from the Baltic Sea

Nygård

Lindegarth

Darr

et al. 2020

Environ Monit Assess

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Benthic habitats and communities are key components of the marine ecosystem. Securing their functioning is a central aim in marine environmental management, where monitoring data provide the base for assessing the state of marine ecosystems. In the Baltic Sea, a > 50-year-long tradition of zoobenthic monitoring exists. However, the monitoring programmes were designed prior to the current policies, primarily to detect long-term trends at basin-scale and are thus not optimal to fulfil recent requirements such as area-based periodic status assessments. Here, we review the current monitoring programmes and assess the precision and representativity of the monitoring data in status assessments to identify routes for improvement. At present, the monitoring is focused on soft-bottoms, not accounting for all habitat types occurring in the Baltic Sea. Evaluating the sources of variance in the assessment data revealed that the component accounting for variability among stations forms the largest proportion of the uncertainty. Furthermore, it is shown that the precision of the status estimates can be improved, with the current number of samples. Reducing sampling effort per station, but sampling more stations, is the best option to improve precision in status assessments. Furthermore, by allocating the sampling stations more evenly in the sub-basins, a better representativity of the area can be achieved. However, emphasis on securing the long-term data series is needed if changes to the monitoring programmes are planned.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing benthic monitoring programmes to support precise and representative status assessments: a case study from the Baltic Sea

Nygård

Lindegarth

Darr

et al. 2020

Environ Monit Assess

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“…Towards standardization of DNA metabarcoding for marine environmental monitoring A European scale monitoring method has been identified as a science priority need to support benthic ecosystem assessments (Van Hoey et al, 2019). Biotic indexes inferred from DNA based taxonomic assignments are comparable to indexes derived from morphological identifications (Aylagas et al, 2018;Elbrecht, Vamos, et al, 2017;Lobo et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimisation of metabarcoding for monitoring marine macrobenthos: primer choice and morphological traits determine species detection in bulkDNA and eDNA from the ethanol preservative

Derycke¹,

Maes²,

Bulcke³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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DNA metabarcoding is a promising method to increase cost and time efficiency of marine monitoring, providing that the impact of methodological choices on the reliability and reproducibility of results are well understood. Here, we investigated the impact of primer choice, DNA source (bulk DNA or eDNA from the ethanol preservative) and morphological traits (body size and body skeleton) on species detection in four distinct macrobenthos communities from the North Sea. We generated a reference database with COI sequences for macrobenthos from the North sea and applied DNA metabarcoding using five COI primer sets. At most 22% of the ASVs were assigned taxonomy at the phylum level, despite the availability of a nearly complete reference database. However, the unassigned ASVs represented only a small fraction of the total reads (13%). The Leray primer set outperformed the four other primer sets in the number of non-chimeric reads and species detected, and in the recovery of beta diversity patterns. Community composition differed significantly between bulk DNA and eDNA samples, but both sample types were able to differentiate the four communities. Importantly, the probability of detecting a species in the eDNA from the ethanol preservative was significantly lower than for bulk DNA for macrobenthos species with small to medium body size and for species with chitine or CaCO3 in their skeleton. Detection in the bulk DNA samples was not affected by the traits investigated, indicating that monitoring of macrobenthos species will be most robust when using bulk DNA as template for metabarcoding.

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“…Also, these baseline data should inform the long-term design of the monitoring and assessment programme for the MPA and should highlight any knowledge gaps. These programmes should: be aligned with the conservation and operational objectives of the MPA; use appropriate indicators; be sensitive to identified stressors or management actions; and be integrated into the wider scale of regional monitoring programmes (Buhl-Mortensen et al, 2017;Loh et al, 2019;Van Hoey et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Western Mediterranean Sea was the main exception to this, because of good scores in the designation phase that were replicated for indicators and assessments in the implementation phase. A coherent and efficient spatial sampling design for the benthos in all phases is essential to achieve more accurate status assessments (Van Hoey et al, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A generic framework to assess the representation and protection of benthic ecosystems in European marine protected areas

Greathead

Magni

Vanaverbeke

et al. 2020

Aquatic Conservation

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Methodological elements for optimising the spatial monitoring design to support regional benthic ecosystem assessments

Cited by 11 publications

References 53 publications

Developing benthic monitoring programmes to support precise and representative status assessments: a case study from the Baltic Sea

Developing benthic monitoring programmes to support precise and representative status assessments: a case study from the Baltic Sea

Optimisation of metabarcoding for monitoring marine macrobenthos: primer choice and morphological traits determine species detection in bulkDNA and eDNA from the ethanol preservative

A generic framework to assess the representation and protection of benthic ecosystems in European marine protected areas

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