Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Cape Town, South Africa; Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Cape Town, South Africa.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Cape Town, South Africa; Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Cape Town, South Africa.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2024 Nov;208:117023. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.117023. Epub 2024 Sep 24.
Functional trait-based approaches improve biodiversity assessment and have consequently been gaining traction in ecology, including marine benthic studies. However, taxonomic diversity is still the default biodiversity metric applied to monitor benthic community responses to environmental variation despite not always representing functional diversity change. Therefore, we used Biological Traits Analysis (BTA) to quantify functional diversity for infauna and epifauna communities collected from the same locations across a depth gradient in the Southern Benguela Shelf ecoregion. Infauna experienced an increase in functional uniqueness with depth, whereas epifauna experienced an increase in functional redundancy with depth. As a result, the epifauna species assemblage predicted 43 % of the epifauna trait assemblage, whereas the infauna species assemblage predicted only 8 % of the infauna trait assemblage. These findings suggest that taxonomic diversity and functional diversity changes are not congruent within and between marine benthic faunal groups. We emphasize the need to utilise both biodiversity metrics when quantifying marine biodiversity for conservation and management objectives.
基于功能特征的方法可提高生物多样性评估的效果，因此在生态学中得到了越来越多的应用，包括海洋底栖生物研究。然而，尽管功能多样性的变化并不总是代表着分类多样性的变化，但其仍然是应用于监测底栖生物群落对环境变化响应的默认生物多样性指标。因此，我们使用生物特征分析（BTA）来量化南本格拉生态区深度梯度上相同地点采集的底内动物和底上动物群落的功能多样性。结果表明，底内动物的功能独特性随着深度的增加而增加，而底上动物的功能冗余性随着深度的增加而增加。因此，底上动物的物种组合可以预测 43%的底上动物特征组合，而底内动物的物种组合只能预测 8%的底内动物特征组合。这些发现表明，海洋底栖动物群落在分类多样性和功能多样性方面的变化并不一致。我们强调，在为保护和管理目标量化海洋生物多样性时，需要同时使用这两种生物多样性指标。
