Smithsonian Marine Station, Ft. Pierce, Florida, 34949, USA.
Smithsonian Marine Station, Ft. Pierce, Florida, 34949, USA.
Mar Environ Res. 2021 Jan;163:105225. doi: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2020.105225. Epub 2020 Dec 1.
Within the coastal marine environment, the increased presence of artificial habitat can have negative impacts on the functioning of marine communities. Artificial structures provide a novel, hard surface for the colonization and growth of a variety of marine species and disproportionally favor introduced species. With the global rise in hardened shorelines, it is imperative to examine the ecological processes that occur within these habitats to those occurring in natural habitats. Here, we compared habitat differences in fouling community composition of different successional ages as well as the impact of predation on those communities. Specifically, we investigated how communities differed with respect to natural (seagrass beds) and artificial (docks) habitats and then exposed previously caged communities to predators to examine prey-specific effects within each habitat and on different aged communities. We found that habitat was a good predictor of community structure including both total species richness and introduced species richness higher in artificial habitats. We expected predators to increase available space allowing increased species co-existence, however, this was not the case. Predators in both habitats reduced richness despite having a strong impact on the percent cover of dominant groups. Predators also reduced introduced species richness, particularly in artificial habitats. Artificial structures are an important pathway of success for introduced species and results here show the importance of biotic resistance within these habitats, potentially limiting the spread of introduced species into natural habitat. Overall, species found within the different habitats could be predicted based on life history traits and predators did not increase the similarity of communities between habitats though still acted in a comparable way, reducing the dominant groups.
在沿海海洋环境中，人工生境的增加会对海洋生物群落的功能产生负面影响。人工结构为各种海洋物种的定殖和生长提供了一种新颖的硬表面，并不成比例地有利于引入物种。随着全球硬化海岸线的增加，检查这些栖息地内发生的生态过程与自然栖息地内发生的生态过程变得至关重要。在这里，我们比较了不同演替年龄的污损群落组成的栖息地差异，以及捕食对这些群落的影响。具体来说，我们调查了社区如何在自然（海草床）和人工（码头）栖息地方面存在差异，然后将之前被笼养的社区暴露于捕食者，以检查每个栖息地内和不同年龄社区中特定猎物的影响。我们发现，栖息地是群落结构的良好预测指标，包括总物种丰富度和引入物种丰富度在人工栖息地中更高。我们预计捕食者会增加可用空间，从而允许更多物种共存，但事实并非如此。尽管对主要群体的覆盖率有强烈影响，但两种栖息地的捕食者都减少了丰富度。捕食者还减少了引入物种的丰富度，特别是在人工栖息地中。人工结构是引入物种成功的重要途径，这里的结果表明这些栖息地内生物抗性的重要性，可能限制了引入物种向自然栖息地的扩散。总体而言，不同栖息地中的物种可以根据生活史特征来预测，尽管捕食者并没有增加栖息地之间群落的相似性，但仍以类似的方式发挥作用，减少了主要群体。
