Impact of marine protected areas on temporal stability of fish species diversity |
| |
Authors: | Amanda K Pettersen Ezequiel M Marzinelli Peter D Steinberg Melinda A Coleman |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Sydney Institute of Marine Science, Mosman, New South Wales, Australia;2. Marine Ecosystem Research, Department of Primary Industries, New South Wales Fisheries, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia |
| |
Abstract: | Preserving biodiversity over time is a pressing challenge for conservation science. A key goal of marine protected areas (MPAs) is to maintain stability in species composition, via reduced turnover, to support ecosystem function. Yet, this stability is rarely measured directly under different levels of protection. Rather, evaluations of MPA efficacy generally consist of static measures of abundance, species richness, and biomass, and rare measures of turnover are limited to short-term studies involving pairwise (beta diversity) comparisons. Zeta diversity is a recently developed metric of turnover that allows for measurement of compositional similarity across multiple assemblages and thus provides more comprehensive estimates of turnover. We evaluated the effectiveness of MPAs at preserving fish zeta diversity across a network of marine reserves over 10 years in Batemans Marine Park, Australia. Snorkel transect surveys were conducted across multiple replicated and spatially interspersed sites to record fish species occurrence through time. Protection provided by MPAs conferred greater stability in fish species turnover. Marine protected areas had significantly shallower decline in zeta diversity compared with partially protected and unprotected areas. The retention of harvested species was four to six times greater in MPAs compared with partially protected and unprotected areas, and the stabilizing effects of protection were observable within 4 years of park implementation. Conversely, partial protection offered little to no improvement in stability, compared with unprotected areas. These findings support the efficacy of MPAs for preserving temporal fish diversity stability. The implementation of MPAs helps stabilize fish diversity and may, therefore, support biodiversity resilience under ongoing environmental change. |
| |
Keywords: | biodiversity marine reserve MPA partially protected areas turnover zeta diversity AMP áreas parcialmente protegidas biodiversidad diversidad zeta reserva marina rotación 视频 海洋保护区(MPA) zeta多样性 生物多样性 周转 部分保护区 海洋保护区 |
|
|