The Environmental Drivers of Benthic Fauna Diversity and Community Composition

Abstract

Establishing management programs to preserve the benthic communities along the NW Pacific and the Arctic Ocean (AO) requires a deep understanding of the composition of communities and their responses to environmental stressors. In this study, we thus examine patterns of benthic community composition and patterns of species richness along the NW Pacific and Arctic Seas and investigate the most important environmental drivers of those patterns. Overall we found a trend of decreasing species richness toward higher latitudes and deeper waters, peaking in coastal waters of the eastern Philippines. The most dominant taxa along the entire study area were Arthropoda, Mollusca, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, and Annelida. We found that depth, not temperature, was the main driver of community composition along the NW Pacific and neighboring Arctic Seas. Depth has been previously suggested as a factor driving species distribution in benthic fauna. Following depth, the most influential environmental drivers of community composition along the NW Pacific and the Arctic Ocean were silicate, light, and currents. For example, silicate in Hexactinellida, Holothuroidea, and Ophiuroidea; and light in Cephalopoda and Gymnolaemata had the highest correlations with community composition. In this study, based on a combination of new samples and open-access data, we show that different benthic communities might respond differently to future climatic changes based on their taxon-specific biological, physiological, and ecological characteristics. International conservation efforts and habitat preservation should take an adaptive approach and apply measures that take the differences among benthic communities in responding to future climate change into account. This facilitates implementing appropriate conservation management strategies and sustainable utilization of the NW Pacific and Arctic marine ecosystems.

Amphipod Distribution: Revisiting Latitudinal Patterns and Environmental Drivers

“…As expected, classifying data based on depth produced different patterns of diversity in both the hexagons and 5° latitude bands. Depth is known as one of the most important variables in marine organisms' distribution 24,[41][42][43] that correlates with different environmental variables in the marine environment. Moree et al 44 proposed that in the epipelagic zone, depth correlated with temperature, primary productivity, and global climate change.…”

“…In contrast, the distribution of benthic species is affected by depth 24 , temperature, and water characters such as sedimentology, wave dynamics, and tidal dynamics 18,19,50 . The result of beta diversity produced different clusters for the composition of pelagic and benthic species in the de ned realm by Spalding et al, 51 in coastal areas.…”

“…However, additional factors such as sedimentology, wave dynamics, and tidal dynamics 18,19 were considered in benthic species distribution. The performance of environmental factors also varied related to depth 20 should be taken into account when determining the distribution pattern of marine species [21][22][23][24][25] .…”

“…In recent decades, studies have shown that the distribution of marine species richness across the globe follows a bimodal pattern with latitude that is likely correlated with sea surface temperature [26][27][28] . However, other environmental and ecological factors may also play a role in determining the distribution patterns of marine species, and these factors may vary depending on the speci c taxa, habitat type, and scale of the study area 24,[29][30][31][32] . Ar anti & Costello 33 observed a similar bimodal pattern in the distribution of amphipod species richness globally, but their study was limited to a smaller database of approximately 400,000 distribution records and they did not classify the data based on depth and habitat type.…”

Application of underwater imagery for the description of upper sublittoral benthic communities in glaciated and ice-free Arctic fjords

“…Studied bays are unique in terms of the environmental conditions that affect them (geographic position, currents, depth, river discharge, glacier melt), which lead to a wide range of benthic organism distributions and abundances. This highlights the importance of collecting environmental data in order to assess which changing environmental factors are the most important drivers of these patterns in the distribution of benthic organisms (Saeedi et al 2022). This would allow predictions of future changes in the communities and, for the rst time in Svalbard, the identi cation of benthic biotopes, similarly as it was done in Norwegian coastal waters and in the Barents Sea using underwater imagery (Buhl-Mortensen et al 2020).…”