Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG), National Research Council (CNR), 56124, Pisa, Italy.
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Apr 23;11(1):8839. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-87711-z.
A foundational paradigm in marine ecology is that Oceans are divided into distinct ecoregions demarking unique assemblages of species where the characteristics of water masses, and quantity and quality of environmental resources are generally similar. In most of the world Ocean, defining these ecoregions is complicated by data sparseness away of coastal areas and by the large-scale dispersal potential of ocean currents. Furthermore, ocean currents and water characteristics change in space and time on scales pertinent to the transitions of biological communities, and predictions of community susceptibility to these changes remain elusive. Given recent advances in data availability from satellite observations that are indirectly related to ocean currents, we are now poised to define ecoregions that meaningfully delimit marine biological communities based on their connectivity and to follow their evolution over time. Through a time-dependent complex network framework applied to a thirty-year long dataset of sea surface temperatures over the Mediterranean Sea, we provide compelling evidence that ocean ecoregionalization based on connectivity can be achieved at spatial and time scales relevant to conservation management and planning.
海洋生态学的一个基本范式是，海洋被划分为不同的生态区，这些生态区标志着独特的物种组合，其中水体的特征、环境资源的数量和质量通常是相似的。在世界上大多数海洋中，由于远离沿海地区的数据稀疏以及洋流的大规模扩散潜力，这些生态区的定义变得很复杂。此外，洋流和水的特征在与生物群落的转变相关的空间和时间尺度上发生变化，而对这些变化的群落易感性的预测仍然难以捉摸。鉴于最近从卫星观测中获得的数据可用性方面的进展，这些数据与洋流间接相关，我们现在有能力根据生物群落的连通性来定义有意义的海洋生物群落的生态区，并随着时间的推移跟踪它们的演变。通过将一个依赖于时间的复杂网络框架应用于地中海海面温度长达三十年的数据集，我们提供了令人信服的证据，表明基于连通性的海洋生态区划分可以在与保护管理和规划相关的空间和时间尺度上实现。
