884427
doi
10.1111/geb.12608
oai:zenodo.org:884427
user-merces_project
user-eu
Cinzia Corinaldesi
Scienze e Ingegneria della Materia, dell'Ambiente ed Urbanistica, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, 60131, Italy
Antonio Dell'Anno
Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell'Ambiente, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, 60131, Italy
Antonio Pusceddu
Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell'Ambiente, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cagliari, 09126, Italy
Gianfranco D'Onghia
Dipartimento di Biologia, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, 70125, Italy
Anabella Covazzi-Harriague
Dipartimento per lo Studio del Territorio e delle sue Risorse, Università di Genova, Genova, 16132, Italy
Roberto Danovaro
Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell'Ambiente, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, 60131, Italy; Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Napoli, 80121, Italy
Functional response to food limitation can reduce the impact of global change in the deep-sea benthos
Cristina Gambi
Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell'Ambiente, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, 60131, Italy
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
benthic biota, deep sea, ecosystem efficiency, macrofauna, megafauna, meiofauna, prokaryotes, viruses
<p><strong>Aim</strong>: A key paradigm of deep-sea ecology is that the ocean interior is a food-limited environment,<br>
which limits the faunal growth. Here, we estimated the efficiency of deep-sea fauna in exploiting<br>
resources to assess the potential response of deep-sea organisms to changes in the food inputs<br>
expected with global change.</p>
<p><strong>Location</strong>: Mediterranean Sea.</p>
<p><strong>Time period</strong>: 1989–2010.</p>
<p><strong>Major taxa studied</strong>: Viruses, prokaryotes, meiofauna, macrofauna and megafauna.</p>
<p><strong>Methods</strong>: Using the largest data set spanning from microbes to megafauna produced synoptically so far, we investigated patterns of abundance, biomass and ecosystem efficiency across depth-related and longitudinal gradients of food availability in both Western and Eastern Basins of the Mediterranean Sea.</p>
<p><strong>Results</strong>: Our results revealed that prokaryotes dominated benthic biomass at depths > 2,000 m. Contrary to what has been reported at a global scale, meiofaunal biomass decreased with increasing water depth more rapidly than macrofauna and megafauna. Meiofauna showed a significant negative log-linear relationship with increasing water depth in the whole Mediterranean Sea,<br>
whereas the other benthic components, from viruses to megafauna, did not decrease significantly, decreased or even increased (e.g., prokaryotes) with increasing water depth. Taking all components together, the efficiency of benthic ecosystems in exploiting organic carbon (OC) inputs increased with increasing depth, in both mesotrophic and ultra-oligotrophic conditions of the deep Mediterranean<br>
Sea.</p>
<p><strong>Main conclusions</strong>: Changes in ecological efficiency in exploiting the energy available in food limited conditions suggest that deep-sea ecosystems can show a responsive adaptation to changes in OC inputs from the photic zone. Our results contribute to explaining the high efficiency of resource exploitation by consumers in limited trophic conditions and allow us to hypothesize that<br>
the consequences of a potential reduction of food supply in deep-sea ecosystems induced by global changes could be less severe than expected.</p>
This document is the accepted Authors' Copy of the paper published in Global Ecology and Biogeography,
26:1008–1021.; doi: 10.1111/geb.12608 . The original manuscript was received on 17 February 2016, accepted on 10 May 2017 and published on 3 July 2017. This research was supported by the EU H2020 MERCES (Marine
Ecosystem Restoration in Changing European Seas) project (Grant Agreement No. 689518).
Zenodo
2017-07-03
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
884426
user-merces_project
user-eu
award_title=Marine Ecosystem Restoration in Changing European Seas; award_number=689518; award_identifiers_scheme=url; award_identifiers_identifier=https://cordis.europa.eu/projects/689518; funder_id=00k4n6c32; funder_name=European Commission;
1579526839.690588
1089879
md5:b957c998ab24bfd2bbd603622bd04b83
https://zenodo.org/records/884427/files/Gambi_et_al_ 2017_ pre-print version.pdf
public