Disentangling the effect of space, time, and environmental and anthropogenic drivers on coastal macrobenthic β diversity in contrasting habitats over 15 years.

Coastal zones are biodiversity hotspots and deliver essential ecosystem functions and services, yet they are exposed to multiple and interacting anthropogenic and environmental constraints. The individual and cumulative effects of these constraints on benthic communities, a key component of coastal ecosystems, and their variability across space and time, remains to be thoroughly quantified to guide conservation actions. Here, we explored how the presence of biogenic habitats influences the response of benthic communities to natural and anthropogenic constraints.

Changes in maerl-associated macroalgal community dynamics as evidence of anthropogenic pressure.

Background And Aims: Maerl-associated communities have received considerable attention due to their uniqueness, biodiversity and functional importance. Although the impacts of human activities are well documented for maerl-associated macrofauna, the spatio-temporal variations of macroalgae have comparatively been neglected, and the drivers that influence their dynamics are poorly known. We investigate the links between maerl-associated macroalgal communities, anthropogenic pressures and environmental conditions, and hypothesize that sites under human pressure would exhibit different dynamics when compared to reference sites.

Quantifying maerl (rhodolith) habitat complexity along an environmental gradient at regional scale in the Northeast Atlantic.

Maerl beds are ecologically important marine biogenic habitats founded on a few species of free-living coralline algae that aggregate and form highly complex rhodoliths. The high biodiversity found in these habitats have been mainly justified by the structural complexity that they provide. However, few attempts to quantify this complexity have been made.