Abstract
Research on intertidal mussel assemblages and associated communities has revealed that complexity and structure are influenced by environmental heterogeneity and local-scale factors affecting recruitment. Research in situ in eastern and western Pacific intertidal ecosystems has suggested drivers of species diversity and community structure encompassing large geographic scales, however, there are major gaps in geographic coverage. Our aim is to fill some of these gaps by analyzing macrofaunal functional group diversity and effects of environmental factors on intertidal mussel communities from three distinct marine ecoregions in the southern and northern hemispheres. We identified the effects of algal cover and environmental heterogeneity on species richness and evenness, and we modeled factors effecting mussel layer complexity from assemblages in three marine ecoregions. We analyzed macrofaunal species diversity within one of the austral ecoregions based on the width of the coastal shelf. Species richness was highest in samples from the northern hemisphere while evenness was highest in samples from the southern hemisphere. Similarity in functional group structure for all communities sampled was ≤55% (Bray–Curtis dissimilarity) and ≤35% (Chao–Jaccard dissimilarity). Wave exposure had a significant effect on shell length and complexity of mussel matrices on rocky bench platforms. The presence of algal cover had a strong effect on species richness in mussel matrices regardless of complexity, while algal canopies had no effect on species evenness. Overall, this study provides significant new insight on the community complexity of mussel beds in parts of the world which have been poorly studied in this regard.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e12785 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Marine Ecology |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 14 Dec 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Feb 2024 |
Bibliographical note
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSAppreciations are due to Susana Cárdenas Alayza at the Center for Environmental Sustainability of Universidad de Cayetano Heredia in Lima Peru and the staff members of the Reserva Punta San Juan in Marcona Peru for their assistance with permitting and fieldwork, to Bruno Ibanez-Erquiaga at the Laboratorio de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad de Cayetano Heredia for his invaluable assistance with field guides and logistics, to the Ministero de la Producción de Peru for the permit to collect marine specimens, the Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales for permission to work in the Reserve, Shaleyla Kalez of EcoOceanica for her assistance with logistics in the northernmost ecoregion of Peru, and Prof. Aldo Pacheco from the Universidad de Cayetano for his assistance with logistics and species identification in Antofagasta Chile. This study was partially supported by the University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences. We would also like to thank the MASTS pooling initiative and contributing institutions. The authors report no conflict of interest. Data is available upon request.
FUNDING INFORMATION
The Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland). MASTS is funded by the Scottish Funding Council (grant reference HR09011).
Data Availability Statement
Data available upon request.Keywords
- algal cover
- intertidal communities
- marine ecoregion
- mussel assemblages
- mussel matrix
- species richness
- wave exposure
Access to Document
- Wilbur_etal_ME_Algal_Cover_As_VoR
© 2023 The Authors. Marine Ecology published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.