Dataset Information

Impact of mangrove forests degradation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

ABSTRACT: Mangroves are amongst the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth, providing a unique habitat opportunity for many species and key goods and services for human beings. Mangrove habitats are regressing at an alarming rate, due to direct anthropogenic impacts and global change. Here, in order to assess the effects of mangrove habitat degradation on benthic biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, we investigated meiofaunal biodiversity (as proxy of benthic biodiversity), benthic biomass and prokaryotic heterotrophic production (as proxies of ecosystem functioning) and trophic state in a disturbed and an undisturbed mangrove forests. We report here that disturbed mangrove area showed a loss of 20% of benthic biodiversity, with the local extinction of four Phyla (Cladocera, Kynorincha, Priapulida, Tanaidacea), a loss of 80% of microbial-mediated decomposition rates, of the benthic biomass and of the trophic resources. The results of this study strengthen the need to preserve mangrove forests and to restore those degraded to guarantee the provision of goods and services needed to support the biodiversity and functioning of wide portions of tropical ecosystems.

SUBMITTER: Carugati L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6125342 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Impact of mangrove forests degradation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Carugati Laura L Gatto Beatrice B Rastelli Eugenio E Lo Martire Marco M Coral Caterina C Greco Silvestro S Danovaro Roberto R

Scientific reports 20180905 1

Mangroves are amongst the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth, providing a unique habitat opportunity for many species and key goods and services for human beings. Mangrove habitats are regressing at an alarming rate, due to direct anthropogenic impacts and global change. Here, in order to assess the effects of mangrove habitat degradation on benthic biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, we investigated meiofaunal biodiversity (as proxy of benthic biodiversity), benthic biomass and prok ...[more]

PMID: 30185918

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Project description:BackgroundWith the recognition that environmental change resulting from anthropogenic activities is causing a global decline in biodiversity, much attention has been devoted to understanding how changes in biodiversity may alter levels of ecosystem functioning. Although environmental complexity has long been recognised as a major driving force in evolutionary processes, it has only recently been incorporated into biodiversity-ecosystem functioning investigations. Environmental complexity is expected to strengthen the positive effect of species richness on ecosystem functioning, mainly because it leads to stronger complementarity effects, such as resource partitioning and facilitative interactions among species when the number of available resource increases.Methodology/principal findingsHere we implemented an experiment to test the combined effect of species richness and environmental complexity, more specifically, resource richness on ecosystem functioning over time. We show, using all possible combinations of species within a bacterial community consisting of six species, and all possible combinations of three substrates, that diversity-functioning (metabolic activity) relationships change over time from linear to saturated. This was probably caused by a combination of limited complementarity effects and negative interactions among competing species as the experiment progressed. Even though species richness and resource richness both enhanced ecosystem functioning, they did so independently from each other. Instead there were complex interactions between particular species and substrate combinations.Conclusions/significanceOur study shows clearly that both species richness and environmental complexity increase ecosystem functioning. The finding that there was no direct interaction between these two factors, but that instead rather complex interactions between combinations of certain species and resources underlie positive biodiversity ecosystem functioning relationships, suggests that detailed knowledge of how individual species interact with complex natural environments will be required in order to make reliable predictions about how altered levels of biodiversity will most likely affect ecosystem functioning.

Dataset Information

Impact of mangrove forests degradation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Publications

Impact of mangrove forests degradation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

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