Fish species richness in the Terminos Lagoon: An occurrence data compilation of four sampling campaigns along a multidecadal series.

Background: Here we present an occurrence dataset that contributes to the knowledge of tropical fish distribution in coastal habitats from the Terminos Lagoon Flora and Fauna Protection Area, one of the largest lagoon ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico. Fish are high biomass keystone species in the Terminos Lagoon which provide socio-economic and ecosystem services. An initiative in 1980 was carried out to systematically sample the fish community of Terminos Lagoon for an annual cycle; the effectiveness of its results led to replicate in the lagoon the same sampling design for three more campaigns in 1998, 2010 and 2016.

Author Correction: A global database for metacommunity ecology, integrating species, traits, environment and space.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Functional diversity and redundancy across fish gut, sediment and water bacterial communities.

This article explores the functional diversity and redundancy in a bacterial metacommunity constituted of three habitats (sediment, water column and fish gut) in a coastal lagoon under anthropogenic pressure. Comprehensive functional gene arrays covering a wide range of ecological processes and stress resistance genes to estimate the functional potential of bacterial communities were used. Then, diversity partitioning was used to characterize functional diversity and redundancy within (α), between (β) and across (γ) habitats.

Low functional β-diversity despite high taxonomic β-diversity among tropical estuarine fish communities.

The concept of β-diversity, defined as dissimilarity among communities, has been widely used to investigate biodiversity patterns and community assembly rules. However, in ecosystems with high taxonomic β-diversity, due to marked environmental gradients, the level of functional β-diversity among communities is largely overlooked while it may reveal processes shaping community structure. Here, decomposing biodiversity indices into α (local) and γ (regional) components, we estimated taxonomic and functional β-diversity among tropical estuarine fish communities, through space and time.

Contrasting changes in taxonomic vs. functional diversity of tropical fish communities after habitat degradation.

Human activities have strong impacts on ecosystem functioning through their effect on abiotic factors and on biodiversity. There is also growing evidence that species functional traits link changes in species composition and shifts in ecosystem processes. Hence, it appears to be of utmost importance to quantify modifications in the functional structure of species communities after human disturbance in addition to changes in taxonomic structure.

[The fish community in the Términos lagoon: compared current structure].

The structure of the fish community in Terminos Lagoon, Campeche, is analyzed on the base the description of the abundance, distribution, length composition and identification of the dominant species. The results are discussed and compared with the published information. 437 trawl tows were made in 19 monthly collection in 23 sites between September 1997 to March 1999.