Protection Enhances Community and Habitat Stability: Evidence from a Mediterranean Marine Protected Area

Philippe Archambault,Stanislao Bevilacqua,Giuseppe Guarnieri,Ferdinando Boero,Simonetta Fraschetti,Antonio Terlizzi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081838

Philippe Archambault, Stanislao Bevilacqua + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081838

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Abstract

Rare evidences support that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) enhance the stability of marine habitats and assemblages. Based on nine years of observation (2001–2009) inside and outside a well managed MPA, we assessed the potential of conservation and management actions to modify patterns of spatial and/or temporal variability of Posidonia oceanica meadows, the lower midlittoral and the shallow infralittoral rock assemblages. Significant differences in both temporal variations and spatial patterns were observed between protected and unprotected locations. A lower temporal variability in the protected vs. unprotected assemblages was found in the shallow infralittoral, demonstrating that, at least at local scale, protection can enhance community stability. Macrobenthos with long-lived and relatively slow-growing invertebrates and structurally complex algal forms were homogeneously distributed in space and went through little fluctuations in time. In contrast, a mosaic of disturbed patches featured unprotected locations, with small-scale shifts from macroalgal stands to barrens, and harsh temporal variations between the two states. Opposite patterns of spatial and temporal variability were found for the midlittoral assemblages. Despite an overall clear pattern of seagrass regression through time, protected meadows showed a significantly higher shoot density than unprotected ones, suggesting a higher resistance to local human activities. Our results support the assumption that the exclusion/management of human activities within MPAs enhance the stability of the structural components of protected marine systems, reverting or arresting threat-induced trajectories of change.

Highlights

Over the past decades, both marine and terrestrial biodiversity experienced rapid global erosion [1]
Despite similarities in taxa composition were found between assemblages from protected and unprotected locations, their patterns of distribution differed in space and time
Temporal variations among locations were portrayed in the non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination (nMDS) ordination of T 6 L(P) centroids (Fig. 2), which showed a higher scattering of centroids of protected locations with respect to unprotected locations, suggesting higher temporal variations in protected assemblages than in unprotected ones

Summary

Introduction

Both marine and terrestrial biodiversity experienced rapid global erosion [1]. Most research indicates that highly diverse assemblages increase the efficiency of ecosystem processes, being less variable in space and time and more resistant to invasion and disturbance than low-diversity assemblages [1,2,3]. Understanding if and how conservation and management actions, while restoring biodiversity, could have a role in maintaining the functional properties of marine and terrestrial ecosystems is overriding [6]. Rising temporal and spatial variability is often a subtle outcome of human disturbance on ecological systems [7,8,9], undermining community structure, leading to decreased resilience and to increased potential for regime shifts [10]. Changes in spatial and temporal variability may inform about the ongoing effects of natural or anthropogenic disturbance [13,14], or serving as warning signals of approximating transitions [15]

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