Spatial structure of reef biodiversity in the Atlantic Ocean

Author(s)

Nayara Fernanda Hachich

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Biologia
• Defense date: 2014-08-13

Examining board members

Thomas Michael Lewinsohn; Paulo Inácio Prado; Carlos Eduardo Ferreira Leite

• Advisor: Sérgio Ricardo Floeter; Thomas Michael Lewinsohn

Abstract

Reefs are among the most threatened marine systems on earth. Anthropic pressures lead to environmental and climate changes that are able to affect reefs quality, directly or indirectly. Compared to terrestrial ecosystems, marine ones are barely studied. The conservation of reef ecosystems requires the comprehension of reef biodiversity distributional patterns and the processes that modulate them. The aim of this study was to investigate spatial patterns on the distribution of reef biodiversity in the Atlantic Ocean. The study of these patterns allows the inference of processes that structure these communities. The first chapter comprises a general introduction that contextualizes and gives a theoretical framework for the comprehension of the research conducted in this thesis. In this introduction I briefly show the theories concerning processes that structure ecological communities and the potential contribution of Island Biogeography, Functional Ecology and Phylogenetic Ecology to the study of patterns and processes on ecological communities. Then, I contextualize the study region, briefly covering the history of the Atlantic Ocean and the knowledge on the ecological and historical-evolutionary processes that affect the structure of reef fish community in the Atlantic Ocean. In the second chapter, formatted in scientific paper style, I investigate the island biogeographic patterns of reef fish, gastropods and seaweeds. I tested how the shallow shelf area, isolation and geological age of Atlantic oceanic islands influence species¿ richness and endemism of reef organisms. I showed that the patterns observed in reef organisms are different from those observed in the terrestrial ones and, furthermore, that for reef organisms the patterns are taxon-dependent. The third chapter, also formatted in scientific paper style, explore qualitative patterns on the distribution of two families of reef fish (Labridae e Pomacentridae) in the Atlantic Ocean. The aim of this study was to understand the relative contribution of reef environment and spatial location to variation of fish diversity between reefs in the Western Atlantic Ocean. To this end I investigated how the taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic aspects of biodiversity of the two reef fish families vary with spatial distance or environmental dissimilarity between reefs. Results showed that the variation of reef fish composition in Western Atlantic reefs is mainly driven by environmental filters and weakly influenced by processes that cause spatial autocorrelation of species distributions. However, the environmental variables that best explained reef fish beta diversity varied strongly, especially between scales and biogeographical regions, but also between reef fish families. This thesis ends with a general conclusion about the main sources of variation in the patterns of distribution of reef organisms in the Atlantic Ocean (including variation due to scale, biogeographic region, taxonomic group or aspect of biodiversity), as well as with a summary of the evidences of ecological, historical-evolutionary and neutral processes in structuring reef communities in the Atlantic Ocean (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/15086-2 - Reef fish communities: phylogenetic patterns and their ecological and evolutionary components
• Grantee: Nayara Fernanda Hachich
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master