Spatial autocorrelation in the response of soft-bottom marine benthos to gas extraction activities: The case of amphipods in the Ionian Sea

Environmental and spatial controls of macroinvertebrate functional assemblages in seagrass ecosystems along the Pacific coast of northern Japan

“…Nakaoka et al, 2005;Tsujino et al, 2009). This is the primarily report to suggest the importance of spatial structuring underlying processes in the determination of the functional community within a taxonomic group, although the explanation of β-diversity by pure spatial predictors has been shown only in unusual circumstances and/or particular faunal groups, such as marine amphipods living in a polluted area (Fiorentino et al, 2012) and the oribatid mite community (Lindo and Winchester, 2009) when a taxonomic classification scheme was used. This study supports the presence of the PD/NM metacommunity dynamics in macroinvertebrates within a regional community by field observation (e.g., Martiny et al, 2011;Chust et al, 2013b).…”

“…Hovel, 2003;Leibold et al, 2004;Boström et al, 2006). A faunal community living in such patchily distributed habitat has been given to the set of local communities linked by the dispersal of multiple potentially interacting species, that is, the metacommunity (e.g., Hubbell, 2001;Holyoak et al, 2005;Logue et al, 2011;Martiny et al, 2011;Chust et al, 2013a,b. The relative importance of environmental and spatial processes in determining community structures has been evaluated in various local community forms patches in both terrestrial and coastal landscapes, such as ponds, lakes, streams, estuaries, marine pelagic areas, tide pools, and intertidal rocky shores (Cottenie, 2005;Mykrä et al, 2007;Lindo and Winchester, 2009;Pandit et al, 2009;Pinto and MacDougall, 2010;Fiorentino et al, 2012;Chust et al, 2013a). In these studies, the relative contributions of environmental and spatial processes were evaluated in each taxonomic group (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, macro-algae, molluscs), because the relative importance of these two mechanisms varied depending on community characteristics such as ecological traits (e.g., dispersal ability, habitat type, life history, and trophic level).…”

Macrozoobenthic assemblages around a marine terminal for re-gasifying liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the north Adriatic Sea (Italy)

“…Before proceeding with the analysis of the possible effects of the LNG Terminal on benthic communities at different distances from the structure, we tested for the presence of a spatial correlation among all sampling stations in the terminal area. Testing for spatial non-independence of multivariate data is needed to avoid problems of spatial non-independence of data, which can lead to spurious results and misinterpretations of the outcomes of the subsequent tests (Legendre, 1993; Dormann, 2007; Fiorentino et al ., 2012). RELATE analysis outlined that, at the investigated spatial scale, in most sampling surveys no spatial correlation was found between the displacement of the sampling stations and the multivariate composition of the macrofaunal assemblages.…”

Impact of offshore gas platforms on the structural and functional biodiversity of nematodes

“…So far, the effect of offshore platforms has been reported to determine a change in species richness and biodiversity of macrofaunal assemblages (e.g., Fiorentino et al, 2012;Manoukian et al, 2010;Olsgard and Gray, 1995;Terlizzi et al, 2008), but with different responses for each platform, according to the platform characteristics, dimensions and local biogeographic/climatic factors (Ellis et al, 1996;Wilson-Ormond et al, 2000).…”