Modularity buffers the spread of spatial perturbations in macroalgal networks.

Theory predicts that spatial modular networks contain the propagation of local disturbances, but field experimental tests of this hypothesis are lacking. We combined a field experiment with a metacommunity model to assess the role of modularity in buffering the spatial spread of algal turfs in three replicated canopy-dominated macroalgal networks. Experimental networks included three modules where plots with intact canopy cover (nodes) were connected through canopy-thinned corridors.

Honeycomb worm bioconstructions persist under combined human and wave-related disturbances.

Marine bioconstructions and their ecological functions are increasingly threatened by compounded natural disturbances and direct and indirect impacts of anthropogenic activities. Through a manipulative experiment in the field, we assessed the response of intertidal biogenic patches built by the honeycomb worm, Sabellaria alveolata, to combined disturbances. Repeated battering events, simulating those associated with waves, were applied on intact or previously damaged bioconstructions, mimicking those impacted by harvesting of infaunal organisms.

Projected loss of brown macroalgae and seagrasses with global environmental change.

Although many studies predict extensive future biodiversity loss and redistribution in the terrestrial realm, future changes in marine biodiversity remain relatively unexplored. In this work, we model global shifts in one of the most important marine functional groups-ecosystem-structuring macrophytes-and predict substantial end-of-century change. By modelling the future distribution of 207 brown macroalgae and seagrass species at high temporal and spatial resolution under different climate-change projections, we estimate that by 2100, local macrophyte diversity will decline by 3-4% on average, with 17 to 22% of localities losing at least 10% of their macrophyte species.

Spatial signatures of an approaching regime shift in Posidonia oceanica meadows.

Determining the proximity of ecosystems to tipping points is a critical yet complex task, heightened by the growing severity of climate change and local anthropogenic stressors on ecosystem integrity. Spatial Early Warning Signals (EWS) have been recognized for their potential in preemptively signaling regime shifts to degraded states, but their performance in natural systems remains uncertain. In this study, we investigated the performance of 'recovery length' - the spatial extent of recovery from a perturbation - and spatial EWS as early warnings of regime shifts in Posidonia oceanica meadows.

Cross-basin and cross-taxa patterns of marine community tropicalization and deborealization in warming European seas.

Ocean warming and acidification, decreases in dissolved oxygen concentrations, and changes in primary production are causing an unprecedented global redistribution of marine life. The identification of underlying ecological processes underpinning marine species turnover, particularly the prevalence of increases of warm-water species or declines of cold-water species, has been recently debated in the context of ocean warming. Here, we track changes in the mean thermal affinity of marine communities across European seas by calculating the Community Temperature Index for 65 biodiversity time series collected over four decades and containing 1,817 species from different communities (zooplankton, coastal benthos, pelagic and demersal invertebrates and fish).

Marine protected areas promote stability of reef fish communities under climate warming.

Protection from direct human impacts can safeguard marine life, yet ocean warming crosses marine protected area boundaries. Here, we test whether protection offers resilience to marine heatwaves from local to network scales. We examine 71,269 timeseries of population abundances for 2269 reef fish species surveyed in 357 protected versus 747 open sites worldwide.

Stabilizing effects of spatially heterogeneous disturbance via reduced spatial synchrony on a rocky shore community.

Understanding how synchronous species fluctuations affect community stability is a main research topic in ecology. Yet experimental studies evaluating how changes in disturbance regimes affect the synchrony and stability of populations and communities remain rare. We hypothesized that spatially heterogeneous disturbances of moderate intensity would promote metacommunity stability by decreasing the spatial synchrony of species fluctuations.

Dim artificial light at night alters gene expression rhythms and growth in a key seagrass species (Posidonia oceanica).

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is a globally spreading anthropogenic stressor, affecting more than 20% of coastal habitats. The alteration of the natural light/darkness cycle is expected to impact the physiology of organisms by acting on the complex circuits termed as circadian rhythms. Our understanding of the impact of ALAN on marine organisms is lagging behind that of terrestrial ones, and effects on marine primary producers are almost unexplored.

Assessing the risk of oil spill impacts and potential biodiversity loss for coastal marine environment at the turn of the COVID-19 pandemic event.

The Tuscan Archipelago, with its great environmental and economic importance, is one of the highest oil spill density areas in the Western Mediterranean. In this study, an interdisciplinary approach, based on numerical applications and experimental methods, was implemented to quantify the risk of oil spill impact along the rocky shores of this archipelago in relation to the maritime activities. The risk, defined as a combination of the hazard and the damage, was quantified for the biennial 2019-2020 in order to account for the effects generated by the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions on the local maritime traffic.

β-diversity reveals ecological connectivity patterns underlying marine community recovery: Implications for conservation.

As β-diversity can be seen as a proxy of ecological connections among species assemblages, modeling the decay of similarity in species composition at increasing distance may help elucidate spatial patterns of connectivity and local- to large-scale processes driving community assembly within a marine region. This, in turn, may provide invaluable information for setting ecologically coherent networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) in which protected communities are potentially interrelated and can mutually sustain against environmental perturbations. However, field studies investigating changes in β-diversity patterns at a range of spatial scales and in relation to disturbance are scant, limiting our understanding of how spatial ecological connections among marine communities may affect their recovery dynamics.

Short-term stability of rocky intertidal biofilm to nitrogen and phosphorus pulses.

Coastal environments experience both natural and anthropogenic inputs of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Agricultural fertilisers, organic run-offs, and edaphic characteristics of coastal environments may generate mosaics of nutrient concentrations that ultimately influence the coastal primary productivity. Here, we experimentally assessed the effects of repeated pulses of N and P on multiple components of ecological stability (sensitivity, resilience, temporal stability and recovery) of phototrophic rocky intertidal biofilm.

Spatial correlation reverses the compound effect of multiple stressors on rocky shore biofilm.

Understanding how multifactorial fluctuating environments affect species and communities remains one of the major challenges in ecology. The spatial configuration of the environment is known to generate complex patterns of correlation among multiple stressors. However, to what extent the spatial correlation between simultaneously fluctuating variables affects ecological assemblages in real-world conditions remains poorly understood.

Unveiling the complexity and ecological function of aquatic macrophyte-animal networks in coastal ecosystems.

Network theory offers innovative tools to explore the complex ecological mechanisms regulating species associations and interactions. Although interest in ecological networks has grown steadily during the last two decades, the application of network approaches has been unequally distributed across different study systems: while some kinds of interactions (e.g.

Mediterranean rocky reefs in the Anthropocene: Present status and future concerns.

Global change is striking harder and faster in the Mediterranean Sea than elsewhere, where high levels of human pressure and proneness to climate change interact in modifying the structure and disrupting regulative mechanisms of marine ecosystems. Rocky reefs are particularly exposed to such environmental changes with ongoing trends of degradation being impressive. Due to the variety of habitat types and associated marine biodiversity, rocky reefs are critical for the functioning of marine ecosystems, and their decline could profoundly affect the provision of essential goods and services which human populations in coastal areas rely upon.

Global COVID-19 lockdown highlights humans as both threats and custodians of the environment.

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence.

Complex networks of marine heatwaves reveal abrupt transitions in the global ocean.

Understanding how marine heatwaves (MHWs) unfold in space and time under anthropogenic climate change is key to anticipate future impacts on ecosystems and society. Yet, our knowledge of the spatiotemporal dynamics of MHWs is very limited. Here, I combine network theory with topological data analysis and event synchronization to high-resolution satellite data and to a set of Earth System Model simulations to reveal the dynamical organization of complex MHW networks.

Climate drives the geography of marine consumption by changing predator communities.

The global distribution of primary production and consumption by humans (fisheries) is well-documented, but we have no map linking the central ecological process of consumption within food webs to temperature and other ecological drivers. Using standardized assays that span 105° of latitude on four continents, we show that rates of bait consumption by generalist predators in shallow marine ecosystems are tightly linked to both temperature and the composition of consumer assemblages. Unexpectedly, rates of consumption peaked at midlatitudes (25 to 35°) in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres across both seagrass and unvegetated sediment habitats.

A fast-moving target: achieving marine conservation goals under shifting climate and policies.

In the Anthropocene, marine ecosystems are rapidly shifting to new ecological states. Achieving effective conservation of marine biodiversity has become a fast-moving target because of both global climate change and continuous shifts in marine policies. How prepared are we to deal with this crisis? We examined EU Member States Programs of Measures designed for the implementation of EU marine environmental policies, as well as recent European Marine Spatial Plans, and discovered that climate change is rarely considered operationally.

Threats to marine biodiversity in European protected areas.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) represent the main tool for halting the loss of marine biodiversity. However, there is increasing evidence concerning their limited capacity to reduce or eliminate some threats even within their own boundaries. Here, we analysed a Europe-wide dataset comprising 31,579 threats recorded in 1692 sites of the European Union's Natura 2000 conservation network.

Temporal clustering of extreme climate events drives a regime shift in rocky intertidal biofilms.

Research on regime shifts has focused primarily on how changes in the intensity and duration of press disturbances precipitate natural systems into undesirable, alternative states. By contrast, the role of recurrent pulse perturbations, such as extreme climatic events, has been largely neglected, hindering our understanding of how historical processes regulate the onset of a regime shift. We performed field manipulations to evaluate whether combinations of extreme events of temperature and sediment deposition that differed in their degree of temporal clustering generated alternative states in rocky intertidal epilithic microphytobenthos (biofilms) on rocky shores.

Harnessing positive species interactions as a tool against climate-driven loss of coastal biodiversity.

Habitat-forming species sustain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in harsh environments through the amelioration of physical stress. Nonetheless, their role in shaping patterns of species distribution under future climate scenarios is generally overlooked. Focusing on coastal systems, we assess how habitat-forming species can influence the ability of stress-sensitive species to exhibit plastic responses, adapt to novel environmental conditions, or track suitable climates.

Hybrid datasets: integrating observations with experiments in the era of macroecology and big data.

Understanding how increasing human domination of the biosphere affects life on earth is a critical research challenge. This task is facilitated by the increasing availability of open-source data repositories, which allow ecologists to address scientific questions at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. Large datasets are mostly observational, so they may have limited ability to uncover causal relations among variables.

BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene.

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series.

Ecological feedback mechanisms and variable disturbance regimes: the uncertain future of Mediterranean macroalgal forests.

Loss of algal canopies can result in a shift towards a turf-dominated state, where variability in species life-history traits can determine new mechanisms of feedback, and influence the degraded system under variable regimes of disturbance. By focusing on rockpools dominated by Cystoseira brachycarpa, we tested the hypothesis that the alga Dictyopteris polypodioides could take advantage of extreme regimes of disturbance related to storms, and outcompete other turfs through a distinctive combination of life traits. Replacement of the canopy was initially driven by a mix of taxon-specific life-traits and resulting assemblages were susceptible to intense events of disturbance.

Mediterranean Bioconstructions Along the Italian Coast.

Marine bioconstructions are biodiversity-rich, three-dimensional biogenic structures, regulating key ecological functions of benthic ecosystems worldwide. Tropical coral reefs are outstanding for their beauty, diversity and complexity, but analogous types of bioconstructions are also present in temperate seas. The main bioconstructions in the Mediterranean Sea are represented by coralligenous formations, vermetid reefs, deep-sea cold-water corals, Lithophyllum byssoides trottoirs, coral banks formed by the shallow-water corals Cladocora caespitosa or Astroides calycularis, and sabellariid or serpulid worm reefs.