Ocean Warming Will Reduce Standing Biomass in a Tropical Western Atlantic Reef Ecosystem

Capitani, Leonardo; Araújo, Júlio Neves de; Vieira, Edson A.; Angelini, Ronaldo; Longo, Guilherme O.

doi:10.1007/s10021-021-00691-z

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…For instance, using a meta-analytical approach, Wilson et al 9 found that 62% out of 55 fishes were coral reliant and showed declines in abundance following coral loss in reefs from six marine biogeographical regions (i.e., Caribbean, Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Indo-Australia, Southern Japan and East Pacific). Also, fish standing biomass in reef food webs facing ocean warming was predicted to severely drop, impairing reef productivity and diversity 61 . Thus, not accessing abundance prevents quantification of the intensity of ecosystem functions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low functional vulnerability of fish assemblages to coral loss in Southwestern Atlantic marginal reefs

Luza

Quimbayo

Ferreira

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Marginal reefs sustain coral assemblages under conditions considered suboptimal for most corals, resulting in low coral abundance. These reefs are inhabited by numerous fishes with a generally unknown degree of association with corals that might lead to the assumption that corals play minor roles in determining fish occurrence, when corals could be actually sustaining diverse and resilient assemblages. Using site-occupancy models fitted to data of 113 reef fish species of different life stages (adults and juveniles) from 36 reefs distributed across the Southwestern Atlantic (0.87–27.6°S) we first assessed fish assemblage’s response to coral and turf algal cover, and identified coral-associated fish. Then, we simulated the loss of coral-associated fishes and contrasted it with random losses, providing inferences on the resilience of fish assemblage’s functional trait space to species loss. The entire fish assemblage responded more positively to coral than to turf algae, with 42 (37%) species being identified as coral-associated fish. The simulated loss of coral-associated fish reduced up to 5% the functional trait space and was not different from the random loss. These results reveal that marginal reefs of Southwestern Atlantic reefs host resilient fish assemblages that might preserve fundamental ecological functions and ecosystem services even with coral declines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low functional vulnerability of fish assemblages to coral loss in Southwestern Atlantic marginal reefs

Luza

Quimbayo

Ferreira

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…Ecospace models can be driven by spatiotemporal data such as satellite-or model-derived time series of primary production, temperature, and salinity maps (e.g., Bauer et al, 2019;Christensen et al, 2015;Coll et al, 2016Coll et al, , 2020Hyytiäinen et al, 2021;Steenbeek et al, 2013;Uusitalo et al, 2022). A growing number of studies investigated ocean warming impacts by means of temperature-based forcing functions (Libralato et al, 2015) or environmental response functions derived from geographic species distributions for many functional groups (e.g., Bentley et al, 2020Bentley et al, , 2017Capitani et al, 2021b;Corrales et al, 2018aCorrales et al, , 2017aSerpetti et al, 2017;Vilas et al, 2021a). Response functions to temperature were commonly obtained from global databases of species distributions like AquaMaps (Kaschner et al, 2019) While forcing and environmental response functions were the most widespread and general modeling techniques for including physical climate change in EwE models, some studies used more application-specific approaches.…”

Section: Physical Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring multiple stressor effects with Ecopath, Ecosim, and Ecospace: Research designs, modeling techniques, and future directions

Stock¹,

Murray²,

Gregr³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Understanding the cumulative effects of multiple stressors is a research priority in environmental science. Ecological models are a key component of tackling this challenge because they can simulate interactions between the components of an ecosystem. Here, we ask, how has the popular modeling platform Ecopath with Ecosim – well-known for applications in fisheries – been used to model human impacts related to climate change, land and sea use, pollution, and invasive species? We conducted an exhaustive, systematic literature review encompassing 163 studies covering mostly aquatic ecosystems. The most modeled stressors were climate change (59 studies), habitat loss (21), species introductions (21), and eutrophication (19), using a range of modeling techniques. Despite this apparently comprehensive coverage, we identify four substantial gaps. First, only 13% of studies investigated three or more stressors, with most studies focusing on single stressors. Compounding this incomplete view, many studies modeled only one of many pathways through which each stressor is known to affect ecosystems. Second, various methods have been applied to define environmental response functions representing the effects of single stressors on species groups. These functions can have a large effect on the timing and magnitude of ecological changes, but best practices for deriving them are yet to emerge. Third, human dimensions of environmental change – except for fisheries – were rarely considered. For example, only 3% of studies reported indicators representing non-extractive ecosystem services. Fourth, only 3% of studies used statistical research designs that allow attribution of ecosystem changes to stressors’ direct effects and interactions, such as factorial (computational) experiments. None made full use of the statistical possibilities that arise when simulations can be repeated 1,000s of times with controlled changes to the inputs. We argue that all four gaps are feasibly filled by integrating ecological modeling with advances in other subfields of environmental science and in computational statistics.

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“…Meanwhile, they are increasingly threatened by anthropic pressure including overfishing, global change, invasive species introduction, habitats destruction and pollution 3 . In particular, on-going global ocean warming is expected to severely affect species distribution, abundance and extinction rates but also trophic interactions and entire food webs balance 4 , 5 . These threats are critical especially for human populations that rely heavily on marine resources and depend on small-scale fisheries (SSF) or tourism for their livelihoods such as tropical developing states or small tropical islands 6 – 8 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehensive spatial distribution of tropical fish assemblages from multifrequency acoustics and video fulfils the island mass effect framework

Salvetat

Bez

Habasque

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Tropical marine ecosystems are highly biodiverse and provide resources for small-scale fisheries and tourism. However, precise information on fish spatial distribution is lacking, which limits our ability to reconcile exploitation and conservation. We combined acoustics to video observations to provide a comprehensive description of fish distribution in a typical tropical environment, the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago (FNA) off Northeast Brazil. We identified and classified all acoustic echoes into ten fish assemblage and two triggerfish species. This opened up the possibility to relate the different spatial patterns to a series of environmental factors and the level of protection. We provide the first biomass estimation of the black triggerfish Melichthys niger, a key tropical player. By comparing the effects of euphotic and mesophotic reefs we show that more than the depth, the most important feature is the topography with the shelf-break as the most important hotspot. We also complete the portrait of the island mass effect revealing a clear spatial dissymmetry regarding fish distribution. Indeed, while primary productivity is higher downstream, fish concentrate upstream. The comprehensive fish distribution provided by our approach is directly usable to implement scientific-grounded Marine Spatial Planning.

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Ocean Warming Will Reduce Standing Biomass in a Tropical Western Atlantic Reef Ecosystem

Cited by 15 publications

References 75 publications

Low functional vulnerability of fish assemblages to coral loss in Southwestern Atlantic marginal reefs

Low functional vulnerability of fish assemblages to coral loss in Southwestern Atlantic marginal reefs

Exploring multiple stressor effects with Ecopath, Ecosim, and Ecospace: Research designs, modeling techniques, and future directions

Comprehensive spatial distribution of tropical fish assemblages from multifrequency acoustics and video fulfils the island mass effect framework

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