Dataset Information

Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect ?-, ?- and ?-diversities on oceanic archipelagos.

ABSTRACT: Island biogeographic studies traditionally treat single islands as units of analysis. This ignores the fact that most islands are spatially nested within archipelagos. Here, we took a fundamentally different approach and focused on entire archipelagos using species richness of vascular plants on 23 archipelagos worldwide and their 174 constituent islands. We assessed differential effects of biogeographic factors (area, isolation, age, elevation), current and past climate (temperature, precipitation, seasonality, climate change velocity) and intra-archipelagic spatial structure (archipelago area, number of islands, area range, connectivity, environmental volume, inter-island distance) on plant diversity. Species diversity of each archipelago (?) was additively partitioned into ?, ?, nestedness and replacement ?-components to investigate the relative importance of environmental and spatial drivers. Multiple regressions revealed strong effects of biogeography and climate on ? and ?, whereas spatial factors, particularly number of islands, inter-island distance and area range, were key to explain ?. Structural equation models additionally suggested that ? is predominantly determined by indirect abiotic effects via its components, particularly ?. This highlights that ? and the spatial arrangement of islands are essential to understand insular ecology and evolution. Our methodological framework can be applied more widely to other taxa and archipelago-like systems, allowing new insights into biodiversity origin and maintenance.

SUBMITTER: Cabral JS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4043083 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect α-, β- and γ-diversities on oceanic archipelagos.

Cabral Juliano Sarmento JS Weigelt Patrick P Kissling W Daniel WD Kreft Holger H

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20140423 1784

Island biogeographic studies traditionally treat single islands as units of analysis. This ignores the fact that most islands are spatially nested within archipelagos. Here, we took a fundamentally different approach and focused on entire archipelagos using species richness of vascular plants on 23 archipelagos worldwide and their 174 constituent islands. We assessed differential effects of biogeographic factors (area, isolation, age, elevation), current and past climate (temperature, precipitat ...[more]

PMID: 24759857

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Project description:Assessments of the effectiveness of marine protected areas (MPAs) usually assume that fishing patterns change exclusively due to the implementation of an MPA. This assumption increases the risk of erroneous conclusions in assessing marine zoning, and consequently counter-productive management actions. Accordingly, it is important to understand how fishers respond to a combination of the implementation of no-take zones, and various climatic and human drivers of change. Those adaptive responses could influence the interpretation of assessment of no-take zone effectiveness, yet few studies have examined these aspects. Indeed, such analysis is often unfeasible in developing countries, due to the dominance of data-poor fisheries, which precludes full examination of the social-ecological outcomes of MPAs. In the Galapagos Marine Reserve (Ecuador), however, the availability of long-term spatially explicit fishery monitoring data (1997-2011) for the spiny lobster fishery allows such an analysis. Accordingly, we evaluated how the spatiotemporal allocation of fishing effort in this multiple-use MPA was affected by the interaction of diverse climatic and human drivers, before and after implementation of no-take zones. Geographic information system modelling techniques were used in combination with boosted regression models to identify how these drivers influenced fishers' behavior. Our results show that the boom-and-bust exploitation of the sea cucumber fishery and the global financial crisis 2007-09, rather than no-take zone implementation, were the most important drivers affecting the distribution of fishing effort across the archipelago. Both drivers triggered substantial macro-scale changes in fishing effort dynamics, which in turn altered the micro-scale dynamics of fishing patterns. Fishers' adaptive responses were identified, and their management implications analyzed. This leads to recommendations for more effective marine and fishery management in the Galapagos, based on improved assessment of the effectiveness of no-take zones.

Dataset Information

Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect ?-, ?- and ?-diversities on oceanic archipelagos.

Publications

Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect α-, β- and γ-diversities on oceanic archipelagos.

Similar Datasets

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