Abstract
Traditional ecological research has focused on taxonomic units to better understand the role of organisms in marine ecosystems. This approach has significantly contributed to our understanding of how species interact with each other and with the physical environment and has led to relevant site-specific conservation strategies. However, this taxonomic-based approach can limit a mechanistic understanding of how environmental change affects marine megafauna, here defined as large fishes (e.g. shark, tuna, billfishes), sea turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds. Alternatively, an approach based on traits, i.e. measurable behavioural, physiological, or morphological characteristics of organisms, can shed new light on the processes influencing structure and functions of biological communities. Here we review 33 traits that are measurable and comparable among marine megafauna. The variability of these traits within the organisms considered controls functions mainly related to nutrient storage and transport, trophic-dynamic regulations of populations, and community shaping. To estimate the contributions of marine megafauna to ecosystem functions and services, traits can be quantified categorically or over a continuous scale, but the latter is preferred to make comparisons across groups. We argue that the most relevant traits to comparatively study marine megafauna groups are body size, body mass, dietary preference, feeding strategy, metabolic rate, and dispersal capacity. These traits can be used in combination with information on population abundances to predict how changes in the environment can affect community structure, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Jerome Spitz, Université de la Rochelle, France Nuno Queiroz, Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO), Portugal
This approach has significantly contributed to our understanding of how species interact with each other and with the physical environment and has led to relevant site-specific conservation strategies. This taxonomic-based approach can limit a mechanistic understanding of how environmental change affects marine megafauna, here defined as large fishes, sea turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds
That a focus on taxonomic units alone is not sufficient to predict the effects of environmental change on Traits Shared by Marine Megafauna biological communities and their ecosystem functions (Díaz and Cabido, 2001; McGill et al, 2006; Violle et al, 2007)
Summary
Most of the traditional research on the conservation of biological diversity focuses on species identities and on how their numbers and abundances change in space and time (Rosenzweig, 1995). Trait-based approaches are being promoted for studying community structure and functions of various groups of organisms, including terrestrial plants (Kattge et al, 2011; Kraft et al, 2015), phytoplankton (Litchman and Klausmeier, 2008; Acevedo-Trejos et al, 2018), zooplankton (Litchman et al, 2013) corals (Madin et al, 2016), mammals (Jones et al, 2009), fishes (Stuart-Smith et al, 2013; Ladds et al, 2018), and microbes (Krause et al, 2014). We highlight the relationships between these traits and ecosystem functions and services relevant for studying the community ecology and the conservation of marine megafauna
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