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(1 - 2 of 2)
- Title
- Surprising episodic recruitment and growth of Antarctic sponges: Implications for ecological resilience
- Description
- Sponges are the most conspicuous component of the Antarctic benthic ecosystem, a system under stress both from climate change and fishing activities. Observations over four decades are compiled and reveal extremely episodic sponge recruitment and growth. Recruitment occurred under different oceanographic conditions on both sides of McMurdo Sound. Most of the sponges appear to have recruited in the late 1990s–2000. Observations from 2000 to 2010 follow thirty years of relative stasis with very little sponge recruitment or growth followed by a general pattern of recruitment by some forty species of sponges. That there was almost no recruitment observed on natural substrata emphasizes the contrast between potential and realized recruitment. This unique data set was derived from a region noted for physical stasis, but the episodic ecological phenomena highlight the importance of rare events. Against a background of intermittent food resources and the low metabolic costs of stasis, understanding the causes of irregular larval supply, dispersal processes, recruitment success and survivorship becomes critical to predicting ecosystem dynamics and resilience in response to increasing environmental change. Our time-series emphasizes that long-term data collection is essential for meaningful forecasts about environmental change in the unique benthic ecosystems of the Antarctic shelf.
- Author
- Dayton, Jarrell, Kim, Thrush, Hammerstrom, Slattery, Parnell
- Title
- High species density patterns in macrofaunal invertebrate communities in the marine benthos,
- Description
- Species density of macrofaunal invertebrates living in marine soft sediments was highest at the shelf-slope break (100-150m) in Monterey Bay (449 m-2). There were 337 species m-2 in the mid-shelf mud zone (80 m). There were fewer species along the slope: 205 m-2 from the lower slope (950-2000 m) and 335 m-2 on the upper slope (250-750 m). Species density was highest inside the bay (328-446 m-2) compared to outside (336-339 m-2), when examining samples at selected water depths (60-1000 m). There was little difference in local species density from 1 km of shoreline compared to regional species density along 1000 km of shoreline at both shelf and slope depths. The highest species densities worldwide in the literature are recorded along the Carolina slope in the Atlantic Ocean, where peak species density (436/0.81 m2) at 800 m and values at the largest sample areas are similar to those on the Monterey Bay shelf. We speculate that the highest species densities occur where ocean water exchanges energy with shoaling topography at the continental margin, bringing more food to the benthos -- areas such as the very productive waters in the upwelling system of Monterey Bay., Cited By (since 1996):1, ,
- Author
- Oliver, Hammerstrom, McPhee-Shaw, Slattery, Oakden, Kim, Hartwell
- Date
- 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z