Biodiversity protection is now recognized as a planetary challenge. In a context of increasing human pressures, this requires monitoring the species composition of communities. SEAMOBB will provide scientific knowledge and practical tools to unlock the 3 barriers that prevented the development of marine monitoring networks for benthic habitats in general (barriers 1 and 3), and for hard bottoms in particular (also barrier 2) by: (1) establishing rationale rules based on connectivity patterns to determine the network of sites to be monitored, (2) finding solutions to standardize the sampling of hard bottoms, and (3) finding solutions to automatize and standardize species composition assessment. Hard bottoms are the left out of marine monitoring actions mainly because of technical constraints. However, Mediterranean hard bottoms harbor endemic and patrimonial habitats which display the highest levels of biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services, from tourism (scuba-diving) to the provisioning of highly valuable species (e.g. large crustaceans, many fish, red coral). Our consortium of 3 academic partners and 2 SMEs from France, Italy and Spain will combine physical oceanography, population genetics and community ecology and realize a 2-3-year (yearly) monitoring of 27 sites (infralittoral). We will compare various Systems of Standardized Sampling (SSS) for hard substrates, including a SSS of our own design that improves working conditions, modularity, and environment-friendliness, and we will assess their representativeness of communities established on natural substrates. Species composition will be assessed using, and improving, innovative automatized methods (e.g. metabarcoding) calibrated with traditional identifications based on morphology. We will in the end deliver a protocol of monitoring for marine hard bottoms, from the design of the network of sites to the analysis of community composition in relation with environment parameters.
SEAMoBB: Solutions for sEmi-Automated Monitoring of Benthic Biodiversity
Federica Costantini
In corso di stampa
Abstract
Biodiversity protection is now recognized as a planetary challenge. In a context of increasing human pressures, this requires monitoring the species composition of communities. SEAMOBB will provide scientific knowledge and practical tools to unlock the 3 barriers that prevented the development of marine monitoring networks for benthic habitats in general (barriers 1 and 3), and for hard bottoms in particular (also barrier 2) by: (1) establishing rationale rules based on connectivity patterns to determine the network of sites to be monitored, (2) finding solutions to standardize the sampling of hard bottoms, and (3) finding solutions to automatize and standardize species composition assessment. Hard bottoms are the left out of marine monitoring actions mainly because of technical constraints. However, Mediterranean hard bottoms harbor endemic and patrimonial habitats which display the highest levels of biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services, from tourism (scuba-diving) to the provisioning of highly valuable species (e.g. large crustaceans, many fish, red coral). Our consortium of 3 academic partners and 2 SMEs from France, Italy and Spain will combine physical oceanography, population genetics and community ecology and realize a 2-3-year (yearly) monitoring of 27 sites (infralittoral). We will compare various Systems of Standardized Sampling (SSS) for hard substrates, including a SSS of our own design that improves working conditions, modularity, and environment-friendliness, and we will assess their representativeness of communities established on natural substrates. Species composition will be assessed using, and improving, innovative automatized methods (e.g. metabarcoding) calibrated with traditional identifications based on morphology. We will in the end deliver a protocol of monitoring for marine hard bottoms, from the design of the network of sites to the analysis of community composition in relation with environment parameters.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
