Romoth Katharina, Darr Alexander, Papenmeier Svenja, Zettler Michael L, Gogina Mayya
Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Seestrasse 15, D-18119 Rostock, Germany.
Biology (Basel). 2023 Jun 6;12(6):825. doi: 10.3390/biology12060825.
Many studies show that habitat complexity or habitat diversity plays a major role in biodiversity throughout different spatial scales: as structural heterogeneity increases, so does the number of available (micro-) habitats for the potential species inventory. The capability of housing species (even rare species) increases rapidly with increasing habitat heterogeneity. However, habitat complexity is not easy to measure in marine sublittoral sediments. In our study, we came up with a proposal to estimate sublittoral benthic habitat complexity using standard underwater video techniques. This tool was subsequently used to investigate the effect of habitat complexity on species richness in comparison to other environmental parameters in a marine protected area situated in the Fehmarn Belt, a narrow strait in the southwestern Baltic Sea. Our results show that species richness is significantly higher in heterogeneous substrates throughout all considered sediment types. Congruently, the presence of rare species increases with structural complexity. Our findings highlight the importance of the availability of microhabitats for benthic biodiversity as well as of the study area for regional ecosystem functioning.
许多研究表明，栖息地复杂性或栖息地多样性在不同空间尺度上的生物多样性中起着主要作用：随着结构异质性增加，潜在物种清单中可用的（微）栖息地数量也会增加。容纳物种（甚至珍稀物种）的能力随着栖息地异质性的增加而迅速提高。然而，在海洋潮下带沉积物中，栖息地复杂性并不容易测量。在我们的研究中，我们提出了一项建议，即使用标准水下视频技术来估计潮下带底栖栖息地的复杂性。随后，该工具被用于调查在波罗的海西南部一条狭窄海峡费马恩海峡的一个海洋保护区内，与其他环境参数相比，栖息地复杂性对物种丰富度的影响。我们的结果表明，在所有考虑的沉积物类型中，异质基质中的物种丰富度显著更高。同样，珍稀物种的出现随着结构复杂性的增加而增加。我们的研究结果突出了微栖息地的可用性对底栖生物多样性的重要性，以及研究区域对区域生态系统功能的重要性。
