Abstract
Based on the past 150 years of research and ongoing time-series observations we give a comprehensive overview of marine species composition around the island of Sylt in the eastern North Sea. A total of 2758 species is listed according to the categories microplankton (591 species), zooplankton (137), nekton (118), benthic microflora (158), benthic macroflora (125), benthic micro-and meiofauna (1204), benthic macrofauna (509), birds and mammals (91), and neobiota (39). Plants account for a third of the species, most (85%) of them are microscopic Chromista. Among animals, 60% of the species are micro- and meiofauna though this faunal component is still insufficiently known. These figures are similar to records from the southern North Sea and therefore may by typical for temperate climate sedimentary coastal areas. A comparison with the total of marine species suggests that the small benthic fauna may be severely understudied over most of the world. Analysis of global change depends on sound baseline data and species inventories like this can assist in the detection of biodiversity changes. They emphasise rare species and the full range of local habitats while time-series measurements usually rely on a few selected habitats and biotic components to generate a very general picture of the state of an ecosystem.
Highlights
Biological research has a long tradition in the North Sea and especially around the German island of Sylt in the north-Frisian Wadden Sea
(7) Benthic Macrofauna—Additional file 1: Table S7. This species inventory is based on an internal list of macrobenthic species in the Northern Wadden Sea compiled by Christian Buschbaum and Karsten Reise in the year 2002, covering the published data as well as unpublished Ms and Ph.D. theses until the year 2000
Combining all species lists, we are aware of 2758 marine species in the Sylt area (Table 1; corrected for double occurrences of species as may result, for instance, from listing adults as macrozoobenthos and their larvae as zooplankton)
Summary
Biological research has a long tradition in the North Sea and especially around the German island of Sylt in the north-Frisian Wadden Sea. Here, Möbius [1] began with studies on the associated species community of oyster beds in the middle of the nineteenth century. Several studies in the coastal ecosystem have repeated surveys from early in the twentieth century 50–80 years later to reveal temporal change [e.g. 6, 7]. Regular observations were initiated which are still carried on. All these studies together with numerous contributions by guest scientists of the Wadden Sea Station Sylt provided the sources for the lists of species compiled for the sea around the island of Sylt. Facing enhanced global warming and biological globalization as well as local human pressure, this regional assessment of species richness will be of outstanding value for understanding and hopefully managing the rapid change in coastal biodiversity
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