On a landscape ecology of a harlequin environment: the marine landscape

Abstract

The marine ‘landscape’, like its terrestrial counterpart, is characterized by a mosaic of resource and environmental patches, that is, a ‘‘harlequin environment’’ (sensu Horn and MacArthur 1972), created by, and embedded in, a matrix of otherwise relatively homogeneous conditions (Levin and Whitfield 1994). The notion of patchiness and heterogeneity in marine landscapes is well known at a range of spatial– temporal scales (Stommel 1963; Longhurst 2006). This notwithstanding, just how the multi-dimensional spatial structure of physical and biological forcing agents in marine environments (e.g., fronts, currents, eddies, prey patches) affect biota and influence key ecological processes lags behind that known for terrestrial environments. The general aim of this paper makes a case for more widespread application of the principles and concepts of landscape ecology to ecological studies of coastal, benthic and, pelagic systems, the latter of which has been especially slow or reluctant to consider the paradigm of landscape ecology. Landscape ecology is fundamentally an interdisciplinary science of heterogeneity (Wu and Hobbs 2002; Wu 2006). Issues of scale, heterogeneity, patchiness and connectivity are widespread in these systems thus making a landscape ecology perspective germane to their study and management. I also argue that we need to overcome more general impediments between marine and terrestrial ecology insofar as sharing of empirical information, methodologies and theory if landscape ecology is to make greater inroads into the marine realm.