Protected and Threatened Components of Fish Biodiversity in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

The Mediterranean Sea (0.82% of the global oceanic surface) holds 4%-18% of all known marine species (~17,000), with a high proportion of endemism [1, 2]. This exceptional biodiversity is under severe threats [1] but benefits from a system of 100 marine protected areas (MPAs). Surprisingly, the spatial congruence of fish biodiversity hot spots with this MPA system and the areas of high fishing pressure has not been assessed. Moreover, evolutionary and functional breadth of species assemblages [3] has been largely overlooked in marine systems. Here we adopted a multifaceted approach to biodiversity by considering the species richness of total, endemic, and threatened coastal fish assemblages as well as their functional and phylogenetic diversity. We show that these fish biodiversity components are spatially mismatched. The MPA system covers a small surface of the Mediterranean (0.4%) and is spatially congruent with the hot spots of all taxonomic components of fish diversity. However, it misses hot spots of functional and phylogenetic diversity. In addition, hot spots of endemic species richness and phylogenetic diversity are spatially congruent with hot spots of fishery impact. Our results highlight that future conservation strategies and assessment efficiency of current reserve systems will need to be revisited after deconstructing the different components of biodiversity.

Dimensions of biodiversity in Chesapeake Bay demersal fishes: patterns and drivers through space and time

“…1), in contrast to what has been shown for birds, mammals, and other marine fishes (Devictor et al 2010, Mouillot et al 2011a, Safi et al 2011. Our results were due to strongly conserved functional traits and evolutionary distances between species within this system.…”

“…We expected to find areas of spatial and temporal mismatch among the different measures of diversity based on previous investigations of estuarine (Villéger et al 2010(Villéger et al , 2012 and marine fishes (Mouillot et al 2011a), as well as other ecological communities (Petchey et al 2007, Devictor et al 2010, Safi et al 2011, Stuart-Smith et al 2013). Based on well-delineated evolutionary relationships among species within this system, and evidence from other systems (Ricotta et al 2012), we expected PD and TD to be suitable proxies for one another.…”

“…They found that species richness and composition were primarily structured along strong environmental gradients, principally salinity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen, with highest richness at the northern and southern ends of the Bay's mainstem channel (Buchheister et al 2013). Given that an increasing number of studies have found strong disagreement in spatial patterns between species richness, functional, and/or phylogenetic diversity (Petchey et al 2007, Devictor et al 2010, Mouillot et al 2011a, Safi et al 2011, Stuart-Smith et al 2013, we supplemented the trawl survey data presented in Buchheister et al (2013) with newly collected functional trait and genetic information.…”

Invading the Mediterranean Sea: biodiversity patterns shaped by human activities

“…Such increased endemism and high species richness makes the Mediterranean Sea one of the world's biodiversity hotspots (Lejeusne et al, 2010). However, Mediterranean marine ecoregions are amongst the most impacted ecoregions globally (Halpern et al, 2008;Costello et al, 2010), due to increasing levels of human threats that affect all levels of biodiversity (Mouillot et al, 2011;Coll et al, 2012;Micheli et al, 2013), severe impacts from climate change (Lejeusne et al, 2010), and biological invasions (Zenetos et al, 2012;Katsanevakis et al, 2013).…”

The Soundscape Approach for the Assessment and Conservation of Mediterranean Landscapes: Principles and Case Studies

“…However, these MPAs cover only 0.4% of this sea (Abdulla et al, 2009), meaning that further work has been urgently demanded by the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity (Perrings et al, 2010) to achieve the goal of protecting a minimum of 10% of coastal and marine areas by 2020. David Mouillot et al (2011) have argued that, despite its relatively small size, the Mediterranean MPA system is spatially congruent with hot spots of taxonomic fish diversity, although this system completely misses verified hot spots of functional diversity. This lacuna largely comes from gaps in detailed and spatially explicit regional-scale data sets (Rodrigues et al, 2004).…”