Economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by deep-sea sponges

Abstract

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A standardised ecosystem services framework for the deep sea

“…The role of natural products as a potential source of novel antibiotics has historically been of crucial importance. Although academic and industrial interests in deep-sea biotechnology have increased (Moloney, 2016;Harden-Davies, 2017;Tortorella et al, 2018;Collins et al, 2021;Jiang et al, 2021;Keeler et al, 2021;Ma et al, 2021;Quemener et al, 2021), the regulating and supporting ES provided by fauna of interest have often been overlooked in bioprospecting research (Ottaviani, 2020). Deep-sea sponges and their associated bacteria and fungi are some of the targeted fauna, as a potential novel source of bioactive metabolites for biotechnological applications such as anti-tumour, antibacterial, antiviral, toxin inhibitors and anti-inflammatory metabolites (Rateb and Ebel, 2011;Batista-Garcıá et al, 2017;Koch et al, 2021).…”

The deep-sea ecosystem engineerGeodia barretti(Porifera, Demospongiae) maintains basic physiological functions under simulated future ocean pH and temperature conditions

“…Recently, also dominant deep-sea sponges, including G. barretti , were shown to be able to feed on DOM (Martijn C Bart et al ., 2020) and a deep-sea sponge loop has been identified (Rix et al ., 2016; Bart et al ., 2021). Given that the deep sea represents the largest habitat on the planet (approximated at 360 million km 2 , (Danovaro et al, 2014)) and contains a high abundance of sponges, sponge-driven processes have the potential to play a crucial role in providing global ecosystem services (Armstrong et al ., 2019) like habitat provision and carbon and nutrient cycling (Ottaviani, 2020; Rossi and Rizzo, 2020). However, to date it is unknown if deep-sea sponges can maintain their ecological function under future changing ocean conditions.…”

Deep-sea sponges in an Anthropocene ocean

“…The cumulating effects of multiple climate-related changes across the distributional range of this habitat-forming deep-sea sponge species might move the environmental conditions beyond this species' full life cycle ecophysiological tolerance. This is not known yet, so it cannot yet be excluded that exposure to future ocean conditions could have farther reaching consequences for sponge-driven ecosystem services such as habitat provision for commercially important fish species (Ottaviani, 2020).…”

“…Shifts in abundance, size and functional diversity of habitat forming sponge species are direct effects of bottom trawling activities (Colaço et al, 2022). In combination with reduced recovery potential (Morrison et al, 2020) and reduced coping potential towards cumulative stressors under future ocean conditions (Chapter 3) can have implications for sponge-driven ecosystem services such as benthic-pelagic coupling, habitat provision (Ottaviani, 2020) and virus predation (Welsh et al, 2020).…”

“…Given that the deep sea represents the largest habitat on the planet (approximated at 360 million km 2 , Danovaro et al, 2014) and contains a high abundance of sponges, sponge-driven processes have the potential to play a crucial role in providing global ecosystem services (Armstrong et al, 2019) like habitat provision and carbon and nutrient cycling (Ottaviani, 2020;Rossi and Rizzo, 2020). However, to date it is unknown if deep-sea sponges can maintain their ecological function under future changing ocean conditions.…”