Presenter: Bryce Barbee (UCLA)
Description:
Trait-based ecology is a critical tool for advancing our understanding of community assembly and response to environmental drivers as well as predicting future outcomes under global climate change, especially for terrestrial plant communities. However, marine macroalgal ecologists still use functional form models developed in the 1980s and 90s, an approach 40+ years out of date. To explore the utility of trait-based ecology for marine macroalgae, we quantified 13 traits of common marine macroalgae in Moorea, French Polynesia and determined whether traits changed over time, with a focus on periods with known environmental stressors. We used macroalgal abundance data from 2006-2020 generated by the Long Term Ecological Research and our measures of traits to track community shifts through a predatory crown-of-thorns outbreak and 2 ENSO events. Traits (wet and dry weight of thalli and blades, toughness, blade count, branching order, surface area, height, width, thickness, calcification, and volume) were measured for 5 replicates of 37 of the most abundant species of macroalgae represented in long term data. We used a nonmetric multidimensional scaling approach based to represent shifts in macroalgal community traits overtime. Macroalgal abundance and trait data were combined to calculate and plot centroids from 2006-2020 for one site in the back reef and one site in the fringing reef. In both sites, an outbreak of a coral predator correlated with a shift toward toughness, a trait known as an anti-herbivore defense. In contrast, ENSO usually favored many blades and branches, traits resulting in high photosynthesis to respiration ratios, although this response varied between sites and ENSO events. While both sites of the fringing and back reef experienced community shifts over time, only the back reef showed signs of recovery. Overall, trait-based ecology captures shifts in macroalgal community functions in response to environmental stress.
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Full list of Authors
- Bryce Barbee ()
- Janelle Layton ()
- Brianna Velasco ()
- Lauren Smith ()
- Caitlin Fong ()
- Paul Barber ()
- Peggy Fong ()
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TRAIT-BASED ECOLOGY DETECTS CHANGES IN MACROALGAL COMMUNITY TRAITS FOLLOWING DISTURBANCE EVENTS
Category
Scientific Session > ME - Marine Ecology and Biodiversity > ME11 Impacts of ecological interactions on marine ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity: New insights from theory, models, and field measurements
Description
Presentation Preference: Oral
Supporting Program: None
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