Diego F. Morales-Torres1,2, Cathy H. Lucas1, Kathryn E. Smith2, Dan A. Smale2
1University of Southampton, UK - 2Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, UK
Understanding how communities respond to environmental perturbations is a central topic in ecological research. Ecological stability is a multifaceted concept focused on examining the capacity of communities to withstand perturbations, their rate of recovery, the extent of the recovery and their temporal variability. Biodiversity has proven pivotal in shaping the stability of communities, as more diverse communities may exhibit higher resistance and decreased temporal variability. Therefore, in the current context of rapid environmental change and biodiversity loss, a better understanding of ecological stability has elevated importance.
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are an increasingly common phenomenon that has been the focus of a rapidly growing body of literature in recent years. However, most impact studies have focused on the immediate response of species/populations rather than employing a long-term, community-based approach. Using long time-series datasets, we explored the effects of MHWs on the stability of temperate-reef communities (i.e., kelps, macroinvertebrates, fish) along a latitudinal gradient in the northeastern Pacific.
We focused on three stability dimensions: resistance, resilience and recovery. To quantify these, we measured different aspects of community diversity (e.g. species richness, evenness, functional and thermal diversity) before, during and after an MHW. As species response to extreme temperature variability highly depends on their thermal tolerance; we predicted that warmer thermally biased communities (i.e. those predominantly composed of species in the warmer edge of the thermal niche) will exhibit higher stability (e.g. higher resistance and complete recovery) following an MHW. Our findings are discussed in the context of MHW intensification under climate change.
Biography
Diego is a PhD student at the University of Southampton, currently working in Dan Smale’s research group at the Marine Biological Association of the UK. His research focuses on the diversity-stability theory, investigating how marine communities respond to disturbances such as Marine Heatwaves (MHWs) and the role of community diversity in mediating these responses.