Setting conservation targets for sandy beach ecosystems

Harris, Linda R.; Holness, Stephen; Sink, Kerry; Schoeman, David S.

doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2013.05.016

Cited by 40 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…These targets are concentrated around the lower limit of the range of international quantitative conservation targets (10-32%) calculated for unconsolidated sediment habitats (Heppel et al, 2008;Rondinini, 2011;Metcalfe et al, 2013;Harris et al, 2014). These targets are concentrated around the lower limit of the range of international quantitative conservation targets (10-32%) calculated for unconsolidated sediment habitats (Heppel et al, 2008;Rondinini, 2011;Metcalfe et al, 2013;Harris et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating species detectability into conservation targets based on the species–area relationship

Karenyi

Altwegg

Sink

2016

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim The species-area relationship-based method of setting habitat-specific conservation targets assumes that detectability of species is perfect. However, this assumption is often violated. This paper aimed to combine species-area relationship (SAR)-based target setting with multispecies occupancy models to better represent communities with a large proportion of rare species, such as marine invertebrate macrofauna, include variable species detection and quantify uncertainty around conservation targets.Location South African West Coast continental shelf.Methods The macro-infaunal dataset used in these analyses consisted of 427 species from 42 sites and 220 samples. To examine the effect of variable species detection and include uncertainty around conservation targets, we compared asymptotic estimator-based targets with those based on multispecies site occupancy models (MSOMs) in a Bayesian framework, which allowed us to account for the observation process and quantify uncertainty more comprehensively.Results Targets based on MSOM were generally higher than those based on asymptotic estimators, with wider credible intervals. Between 10% and 15% (95% credible interval) of the area should be protected to represent 80% of the species, with the exception of one habitat with many common species that had a conservation target of 2%.Main conclusions Detection error-corrected targets based on MSOM are higher than uncorrected targets based on asymptotic estimators for habitats with lower detection and higher proportions of rare species. Our estimated conservation targets are close to the 10% target for marine habitats set by the Convention of Biological Diversity and in line with international studies but should be considered minimum targets as they do not take into account species persistence. Our results affirm the value of the modified SAR approach, which is applicable to any marine or terrestrial ecosystem. Unlike earlier methods, our modification naturally quantifies uncertainty in estimated conservation targets providing a measure of target robustness for decision-makers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incorporating species detectability into conservation targets based on the species–area relationship

Karenyi

Altwegg

Sink

2016

Diversity and Distributions

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“…Similarly, numerous vertebrate species, many of conservation concern (e.g., turtles and seabirds), depend on beaches and dunes (Schlacher et al, 2008). Beaches should therefore be of considerable conservation importance (Harris et al, 2013).…”

Section: Tropicalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate‐change impacts on sandy‐beach biota: crossing a line in the sand

Schoeman

Schlacher

Defeo

2014

Global Change Biology

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Sandy ocean beaches are iconic assets that provide irreplaceable ecosystem services to society. Despite their great socioeconomic importance, beaches as ecosystems are severely under-represented in the literature on climate-change ecology. Here, we redress this imbalance by examining whether beach biota have been observed to respond to recent climate change in ways that are consistent with expectations under climate change. We base our assessments on evidence coming from case studies on beach invertebrates in South America and on sea turtles globally. Surprisingly, we find that observational evidence for climate-change responses in beach biota is more convincing for invertebrates than for highly charismatic turtles. This asymmetry is paradoxical given the better theoretical understanding of the mechanisms by which turtles are likely to respond to changes in climate. Regardless of this disparity, knowledge of the unique attributes of beach systems can complement our detection of climate-change impacts on sandy-shore invertebrates to add rigor to studies of climate-change ecology for sandy beaches. To this end, we combine theory from beach ecology and climate-change ecology to put forward a suite of predictive hypotheses regarding climate impacts on beaches and to suggest ways that these can be tested. Addressing these hypotheses could significantly advance both beach and climate-change ecology, thereby progressing understanding of how future climate change will impact coastal ecosystems more generally.

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“…Thus, little is known about the diversity patterns and relative importance of spatial and environmental factors for the microeukaryotic community. In fact, the information and hypotheses about global patterns of species richness on sandy beaches have mainly focused on macro-and meio-fauna in recent decades (McArdle and McLachlan, 1992;Defeo and McLachlan, 2005;Harris et al, 2014;Nel et al, 2014), and very few studies have quantified the rare microbial species (Fonseca et al, 2014). New methods using HTS and bioinformatic tools allow us to quantify microeukaryotic diversity of this important and unique habitat in a way that encompasses both the abundant and rare members of the ecosystem at a meaningful sequencing depth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The diversity and biogeography of abundant and rare intertidal marine microeukaryotes explained by environment and dispersal limitation

Zhang

Pan

Yang

et al. 2017

Environmental Microbiology

113

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SummaryBenthic microeukaryotes are key ecosystem drivers in marine sandy beaches, an important and dynamic environment; however, little is known about their diversity and biogeography on a large spatial scale. Here, we investigated the community composition and geographical distributions of benthic microeukaryotes using high-throughput sequencing of the 18S rRNA gene and quantified the contributions of environmental factors and spatial separation on the distribution patterns of both rare and abundant taxa. We collected 36 intertidal samples at 12 sandy beaches from four regions that spanned distances from 0.001 to 12,000 km. We found 12,890 operational taxonomic units (OTUs; 97% sequence identity level) including members of all eukaryotic super-groups and several phyla of uncertain position. Arthropoda and Diatomeae dominated the sequence reads in abundance, but Ciliophora and Discoba were the most diverse groups across all samples. About onethird of the OTUs could not be definitively classified at a similarity level of 80%, supporting the view that a large number of rare and minute marine species may have escaped previous characterization. We found generally similar geographical patterns for abundant and rare microeukaryotic sub-communities, and both showed a significant distance-decay similarity trend. Variation partitioning showed that both rare and abundant sub-communities exhibited a slightly stronger response to environmental factors than spatial (distance) factors. However, the abundant subcommunity was strongly correlated with variations in spatial, environmental and sediment grain size factors (66% of variance explained), but the rare assemblage was not (16%). This suggests that different or more complex mechanisms generate and maintain diversity in the rare biosphere in this habitat.

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Setting conservation targets for sandy beach ecosystems

Cited by 40 publications

References 88 publications

Incorporating species detectability into conservation targets based on the species–area relationship

Incorporating species detectability into conservation targets based on the species–area relationship

Climate‐change impacts on sandy‐beach biota: crossing a line in the sand

The diversity and biogeography of abundant and rare intertidal marine microeukaryotes explained by environment and dispersal limitation

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