Understanding Marine Biodiversity (1995) / Chapter Skim
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2 LINKING PATTERN TO PROCESS: A REGIONAL-SCALE APPROACH
2 LINKING PATTERN TO PROCESS: A REGIONAL-SCALE APPROACH
Pages 14-23
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From page 14... ...
Water motion affects biology by acting as a transport mechanism for organisms and their propagules, as a dynamic boundary between regimes, and as a force to which organisms must adapt or respond, for example, in their feeding and locomotor activities (Vogel, 1981; Nowell and Jumars, 1984; Denny, 1988, 19939. Delineating the boundaries of geographic regions thus involves both biological and physical criteria criteria that define the maximum spatial and temporal scales generally required to characterize adequately the processes that control biodiversity maintenance at a local scale.
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From page 15... ...
;. The higher order diversity of marine life is substantially; richer: there are i 3; unique marine animal phyla (~as opposed to 1 unique land phylum)
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1~. The most relevant scales for studying particular species or dynamical interactions among species will not be the same as for others, and hence there is no single correct set of scales for viewing a system.
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From page 17... ...
Note that this includes empty patches of suitable habitat, for example, in a mussel bed or on a coral reef, where a group of mussels or corals has been recently consumed by sea stars or destroyed by moving debris during violent storms (Cornell, 1978; Paine and S.A. Levin, 1981~.
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8 UNDERSTANDING MARINE BIODIVERSITY (a site) ~tio`~5 Point -R E G I O N oceanographic processes Ad planitoncornmunity GYRE a: ~ q | R E G I O N l FIGURE 2 The relationship between patches, metapopulations, communities, sites, and regions using a benthic and a pelagic example.
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From page 19... ...
In fact, because current regimes and other physical transport characteristics of the marine environment have changed over geologic time due to changing sea level, coastline, and bottom morphology, and water temperature and salinity characteristics, it cannot be assumed that organisms are necessarily optimally adapted to the physical regime in which they presently reside (Valentine and Jablonski, 19931. Any understanding of present
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From page 20... ...
Moreover, spatial scales tend to increase as time scales increase. Thus, for example, time scales associated with various physical oceanographic processes define advection length scales for planktonic larval transport, and the frequency and duration of resuspension events for benthic resting stages.
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A RATIONALE FOR STUDYING SEVERAL TYPES OF REGIONAL MODEL SYSTEMS Three biological rationales suggest the need to use a regional-scale approach to study, concurrently, a variety of different types of marine ecosystems.
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From page 22... ...
For example, the larvae of the Caribbean spiny lobster spend 9 or more months traversing the open-ocean pelagic ecosystems of the North Atlantic gyre (Farmer et al., 1989~. Thus, an important factor influencing the abundance of adult lobster populations may be very distant oceanographic and biological processes in an ecosystem not likely to be directly studied by Caribbean lobster ecologists.
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From page 23... ...
These questions are designed to yield new insights and to enhance understanding of the factors controlling biological diversity, and to increase predictive capability regarding changes in marine biodiversity due to anthropogenic effects in order to provide essential management and conservation guidelines. The five fundamental objectives of this initiative are: · to understand the patterns, processes, and consequences of changing marine biological diversity by focusing on critical environmental issues and their threshold effects, and to address these effects at spatial scales from local to regional and at appropriate temporal scales; · to improve the linkages between the marine ecological and oceanographic sciences by increasing understanding of the connectivity between local, smallerscale biodiversity patterns and processes, and regional, larger-scale oceanographic patterns and processes that may directly impact local phenomena; · to strengthen and expand the field of marine taxonomy through training, the development of new methodologies, and enhanced information dissemination, and to raise the standard of taxonomic competence in all marine ecological research; · to facilitate and encourage the incorporation of (1)
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