Abstract
Disturbance and habitat destruction due to human activities is a pervasive problem in near-shore marine ecosystems, and restoration is often used to mitigate losses. A common metric used to evaluate the success of restoration is the return of ecosystem services. Previous research has shown that biodiversity, including genetic diversity, is positively associated with the provision of ecosystem services. We conducted a restoration experiment using sources, techniques, and sites similar to actual large-scale seagrass restoration projects and demonstrated that a small increase in genetic diversity enhanced ecosystem services (invertebrate habitat, increased primary productivity, and nutrient retention). In our experiment, plots with elevated genetic diversity had plants that survived longer, increased in density more quickly, and provided more ecosystem services (invertebrate habitat, increased primary productivity, and nutrient retention). We used the number of alleles per locus as a measure of genetic diversity, which, unlike clonal diversity used in earlier research, can be applied to any organism. Additionally, unlike previous studies where positive impacts of diversity occurred only after a large disturbance, this study assessed the importance of diversity in response to potential environmental stresses (high temperature, low light) along a water–depth gradient. We found a positive impact of diversity along the entire depth gradient. Taken together, these results suggest that ecosystem restoration will significantly benefit from obtaining sources (transplants or seeds) with high genetic diversity and from restoration techniques that can maintain that genetic diversity.
Highlights
Ecological restoration is the process of augmenting the recovery of a degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystem [1]
The number of invertebrates was positively correlated with genetic diversity during the summer (Fig. 2); in 2010, invertebrate density was measured during the fall and there was no significant relationship (R2 = 0.1, p = 0.5)
Genetic diversity, measured as allelic diversity, was positively associated with seagrass density, which cascaded upward into positive impacts on invertebrate density, nitrogen retention, and areal productivity. This is in agreement with previous studies that have demonstrated a positive effect of clonal diversity on ecological parameters [11,12,14]; these results are unusual in that the enhancement of ecosystem services occurred without obvious signs of ecological stress or disturbance
Summary
Ecological restoration is the process of augmenting the recovery of a degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystem [1]. Ecosystem resistance and resilience (stability), and the provision of ecosystem services, such as primary and secondary production are often positively correlated with measures of biodiversity [2,3,4]. In communities dominated by a single foundation species, such as temperate seagrass meadows, kelp forests, or cattail marshes, genetic diversity may be the most appropriate measure of biodiversity. The term genetic diversity is often broadly used to describe a number of measures, all of which may be important [7]. The number of unique individuals within populations is more appropriately called genotypic diversity or clonal diversity, whereas heterozygosity (measured within an individual) and allelic diversity (measured at the population level) are true measures of genetic diversity
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