Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae

Duffy, J. Emmett; Benedetti‐Cecchi, Lisandro; Triñanes, Joaquín; Muller‐Karger, Frank E.; Ambo‐Rappe, Rohani; Boström, Christoffer; Buschmann, Alejandro H.; Byrnes, Jarrett E. K.; Coles, Robert G.; Creed, Joel Christopher; Cullen-Unsworth, Leanne C.; Díaz-Pulido, Guillermo; Duarte, Carlos M.; Edgar, Graham J.; Fortes, Miguel D.; Goñi, Gustavo; Hu, Chuanmin; Huang, Xiaoping; Hurd, Catriona L.; Johnson, Craig R.; Konar, Brenda; Krause‐Jensen, Dorte; Krumhansl, Kira A.; Macreadie, Peter I.; Marsh, Helene; McKenzie, Len; Mieszkowska, Nova; Miloslavich, Patricia; Montes, Enrique; Nakaoka, Masahiro; Norderhaug, Kjell Magnus; Norlund, Lina M.; Orth, Robert J.; Prathep, Anchana; Putman, Nathan F.; Samper‐Villarreal, Jimena; Serrão, Ester A.; Short, Frederick T.; Sousa-Pinto, Isabel; Steinberg, Peter D.; Stuart‐Smith, Rick D.; Unsworth, Richard K. F.; Keulen, M. van; Tussenbroek, Brigitta I. van; Wang, Mengqiu; Waycott, Michelle; Weatherdon, Lauren V.; Wernberg, Thomas; Yaakub, Siti Maryam

doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00317

Cited by 143 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 292 publications

(337 reference statements)

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“…We recommend further studies in seagrass meadows and adopting a common size‐based approach in order to generalize size spectra interpretations so that global seagrass research is enhanced and replicable across all locations (Duffy et al. ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat complexity influences the structure of food webs in Great Barrier Reef seagrass meadows

et al. 2019

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Structural habitat complexity is a fundamental attribute influencing ecological food webs. Simplification of complex habitats occurs due to both natural and anthropogenic pressures that can alter productivity of food webs. Relationships between food web structure and habitat complexity may be influenced by multiple mechanisms, and untangling these can be challenging. We investigated whether (1) size spectra vary across a gradient of habitat complexity in seagrass meadows and (2) structural complexity changes the importance of different primary producers supporting the food web (determined using stable isotope analysis) in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. We found that moderately complex meadows had much steeper size spectra slopes, caused by a higher abundance of smaller animals and fewer larger animals, while meadows on either end of the complexity scale (low and a single meadow with very high complexity) had shallower slopes, indicative of a more balanced distribution of animal sizes across the spectrum. We also found that the importance of epiphytic algae as a food source was high in most meadows, despite the increase in seagrass surface area on which epiphytes could grow. The consistent importance of epiphytic algae suggests that the changes in the availability of different potential food sources did not affect food web structure. Our findings indicate that food web structure may change with variations in structural complexity because of changes in the abundance of smaller and/or larger animals. Food web structure and food sources are important determinants of the dynamic stability of food webs. Size spectra analysis is already used as a monitoring tool for assessing populations of key fisheries species in commercial fishing operations, and thus, we recommend using size spectra as a proxy for assessing the structure of the food webs in different types of seagrass meadows. Size spectra may be a useful indicator of how different meadows provide for ecosystem services such as fisheries.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat complexity influences the structure of food webs in Great Barrier Reef seagrass meadows

et al. 2019

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“…In 2018, researchers and managers from around the world drafted a consensus assessment and recommendations on the current state of, and opportunities for, advancing global marine macrophyte observations, integrating contributions from a community with broad geographic and disciplinary expertise (Duffy et al, 2019). This review noted that several challenges hinder effective global observing of seagrass status and trends.…”

Section: Seagrass Cover and Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Response to Scientific and Societal Needs for Marine Biological Observations

et al. 2019

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“…Reference libraries for plant communities are being constructed, such as the database on arctic flora initiated by Sønstebø et al (2010), which was then expanded by (Boessenkool et al 2014). However, coastal plant reference databases are yet to be constructed or made widely available (Duffy et al 2019); therefore, this is an area of research that needs to be addressed before implementing eDNA as a management tool. Additionally, reference sequences must also be of the same loci as chosen for amplification of the DNA from sediments, that is, either a universal locus in the case of metabarcoding or multiple loci in the case of hybridisation capture.…”

Section: Is Hybridisation Capture Feasible and What Information Can Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These data provide broad inference of climate and ecosystem changes that can be evaluated over decades to thousands of years (Ellegaard et al 2006;Johnson et al 2007;Cohen et al 2012). However, this approach provides limited information regarding community composition and taxonomic resolution, which is a significant limitation when attempting to reconstruct the ecological history of a coastal site (Duffy et al 2019). Owing to either a temporal limitation, limited taxonomic resolution or a general lack of data, current methods for monitoring long-term change are difficult to apply to answer many of the questions we have around change in coastal vegetated environments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A muddy time capsule: using sediment environmental DNA for the long-term monitoring of coastal vegetated ecosystems

Foster

Gillanders

Jones

et al. 2020

Mar. Freshwater Res.

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Seagrass, saltmarsh and mangrove habitats are declining around the world as anthropogenic activity and climate change intensify. To be able to effectively restore and maintain healthy coastal-vegetation communities, we must understand how and why they have changed in the past. Identifying shifts in vegetation communities, and the environmental or human drivers of these, can inform successful management and restoration strategies. Unfortunately, long-term data (i.e. decades to hundreds of years) on coastal vegetated ecosystems that can discern community-level changes are mostly non-existent in the scientific record. We propose implementing DNA extracted from coastal sediments to provide an alternative approach to long-term ecological reconstruction for coastal vegetated ecosystems. This type of DNA is called ‘environmental DNA’ and has previously been used to generate long-term datasets for other vegetated systems but has not yet been applied to vegetation change in coastal settings. In this overview, we explore the idea of using sediment eDNA as a long-term monitoring tool for seagrass, saltmarsh and mangrove communities. We see real potential in this approach for reconstructing long-term ecological histories of coastal vegetated ecosystems, and advocate that further research be undertaken to develop appropriate methods for its use.

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Toward a Coordinated Global Observing System for Seagrasses and Marine Macroalgae

Cited by 143 publications

References 292 publications

Habitat complexity influences the structure of food webs in Great Barrier Reef seagrass meadows

Habitat complexity influences the structure of food webs in Great Barrier Reef seagrass meadows

A Response to Scientific and Societal Needs for Marine Biological Observations

A muddy time capsule: using sediment environmental DNA for the long-term monitoring of coastal vegetated ecosystems

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