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Protection enhances community and habitat stability: evidence from a mediterranean marine protected area.

ABSTRACT: Rare evidences support that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) enhance the stability of marine habitats and assemblages. Based on nine years of observation (2001-2009) inside and outside a well managed MPA, we assessed the potential of conservation and management actions to modify patterns of spatial and/or temporal variability of Posidonia oceanica meadows, the lower midlittoral and the shallow infralittoral rock assemblages. Significant differences in both temporal variations and spatial patterns were observed between protected and unprotected locations. A lower temporal variability in the protected vs. unprotected assemblages was found in the shallow infralittoral, demonstrating that, at least at local scale, protection can enhance community stability. Macrobenthos with long-lived and relatively slow-growing invertebrates and structurally complex algal forms were homogeneously distributed in space and went through little fluctuations in time. In contrast, a mosaic of disturbed patches featured unprotected locations, with small-scale shifts from macroalgal stands to barrens, and harsh temporal variations between the two states. Opposite patterns of spatial and temporal variability were found for the midlittoral assemblages. Despite an overall clear pattern of seagrass regression through time, protected meadows showed a significantly higher shoot density than unprotected ones, suggesting a higher resistance to local human activities. Our results support the assumption that the exclusion/management of human activities within MPAs enhance the stability of the structural components of protected marine systems, reverting or arresting threat-induced trajectories of change.

SUBMITTER: Fraschetti S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3859515 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Protection enhances community and habitat stability: evidence from a mediterranean marine protected area.

Fraschetti Simonetta S Guarnieri Giuseppe G Bevilacqua Stanislao S Terlizzi Antonio A Boero Ferdinando F

PloS one 20131211 12

Rare evidences support that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) enhance the stability of marine habitats and assemblages. Based on nine years of observation (2001-2009) inside and outside a well managed MPA, we assessed the potential of conservation and management actions to modify patterns of spatial and/or temporal variability of Posidonia oceanica meadows, the lower midlittoral and the shallow infralittoral rock assemblages. Significant differences in both temporal variations and spatial patterns w ...[more]

PMID: 24349135

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Project description:BackgroundMarine soundscape is the aggregation of sound sources known as geophony, biophony, and anthrophony. The soundscape analysis, in terms of collection and analysis of acoustic signals, has been proposed as a tool to evaluate the specific features of ecological assemblages and to estimate their acoustic variability over space and time. This study aimed to characterise the Capo Caccia-Isola Piana Marine Protected Area (Italy, Western Mediterranean Sea) soundscape over short temporal (few days) and spatial scales (few km) and to quantify the main anthropogenic and biological components, with a focus on fish biophonies.MethodsWithin the MPA, three sites were chosen each in a different protection zone (A for the integral protection, B as the partial protection, and C as the general protection). In each site, two underwater autonomous acoustic recorders were deployed in July 2020 at a depth of about 10 m on rocky bottoms. To characterise the contribution of both biophonies and anthrophonies, sea ambient noise (SAN) levels were measured as sound pressure level (SPL dB re: 1 μ Pa-rms) at eight 1/3 octave bands, centred from 125 Hz to 16 kHz, and biological and anthropogenic sounds were noted. Fish sounds were classified and counted following a catalogue of known fish sounds from the Mediterranean Sea based on the acoustic characteristic of sound types. A contemporary fish visual census had been carried out at the test sites.ResultsSPL were different by site, time (day vs. night), and hour. SPLs bands centred at 125, 250, and 500 Hz were significantly higher in the daytime, due to the high number of boats per minute whose noise dominated the soundscapes. The loudest man-made noise was found in the A zone, followed by the B and the C zone, confirming that MPA current regulations do not provide protection from acoustic pollution. The dominant biological components of the MPA soundscape were the impulsive sounds generated by some invertebrates, snapping shrimps and fish. The vast majority of fish sounds were recorded at the MPA site characterized by the highest sound richness, abundance, and Shannon-Wiener index, coherently with the results of a fish visual census. Moreover, the acoustic monitoring detected a sound associated with a cryptic species (Ophidion spp.) never reported in the study area before, further demonstrating the usefulness of passive acoustic monitoring as a complementary technique to species census. This study provides baseline data to detect future changes of the marine soundscapes and some suggestions to reduce the impact of noise on marine biodiversity.

Dataset Information

Protection enhances community and habitat stability: evidence from a mediterranean marine protected area.

Publications

Protection enhances community and habitat stability: evidence from a mediterranean marine protected area.

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