School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Sydney Institute of Marine Science and The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
PLoS One. 2018 Mar 16;13(3):e0193711. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193711. eCollection 2018.
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are designed to reduce threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning from anthropogenic activities. Assessment of MPAs effectiveness requires synchronous sampling of protected and non-protected areas at multiple spatial and temporal scales. We used an autonomous underwater vehicle to map benthic communities in replicate 'no-take' and 'general-use' (fishing allowed) zones within three MPAs along 7o of latitude. We recorded 92 taxa and 38 morpho-groups across three large MPAs. We found that important habitat-forming biota (e.g. massive sponges) were more prevalent and abundant in no-take zones, while short ephemeral algae were more abundant in general-use zones, suggesting potential short-term effects of zoning (5-10 years). Yet, short-term effects of zoning were not detected at the community level (community structure or composition), while community structure varied significantly among MPAs. We conclude that by allowing rapid, simultaneous assessments at multiple spatial scales, autonomous underwater vehicles are useful to document changes in marine communities and identify adequate scales to manage them. This study advanced knowledge of marine benthic communities and their conservation in three ways. First, we quantified benthic biodiversity and abundance, generating the first baseline of these benthic communities against which the effectiveness of three large MPAs can be assessed. Second, we identified the taxonomic resolution necessary to assess both short and long-term effects of MPAs, concluding that coarse taxonomic resolution is sufficient given that analyses of community structure at different taxonomic levels were generally consistent. Yet, observed differences were taxa-specific and may have not been evident using our broader taxonomic classifications, a classification of mid to high taxonomic resolution may be necessary to determine zoning effects on key taxa. Third, we provide an example of statistical analyses and sampling design that once temporal sampling is incorporated will be useful to detect changes of marine benthic communities across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
海洋保护区（MPAs）旨在减少人为活动对生物多样性和生态系统功能的威胁。评估 MPA 的有效性需要在多个时空尺度上同步采样保护区和非保护区。我们使用自主水下航行器在三个 MPA 内的重复“禁渔区”和“通用区”（允许捕鱼）内绘制海底群落，范围跨越 7 个纬度。我们在三个大型 MPA 中记录了 92 个分类群和 38 个形态群。我们发现，重要的生境形成生物（例如大型海绵）在禁渔区内更为普遍和丰富，而短期短暂藻类在通用区内更为丰富，这表明分区（5-10 年）存在潜在的短期影响。然而，在群落水平上（群落结构或组成）并未检测到分区的短期影响，而群落结构在 MPA 之间存在显著差异。我们得出的结论是，自主水下航行器通过允许在多个时空尺度上快速、同步评估，可用于记录海洋群落的变化并确定管理它们的适当尺度。本研究以三种方式推进了海洋海底群落及其保护的知识。首先，我们量化了海底生物多样性和丰度，为评估三个大型 MPA 的有效性提供了这些海底群落的第一个基线。其次，我们确定了评估 MPA 短期和长期影响所需的分类分辨率，得出结论认为，只要在不同分类水平上的群落结构分析基本一致，粗分类分辨率就足够了。然而，观察到的差异是特定于分类群的，并且使用我们更广泛的分类分类可能无法明显看出，对关键分类群可能需要进行中等到高分类分辨率的分类，以确定分区对关键分类群的影响。第三，我们提供了一个统计分析和采样设计的示例，一旦纳入时间采样，将有助于在多个时空尺度上检测海洋海底群落的变化。
