Matching biological traits to environmental conditions in marine benthic ecosystems

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that bottom trawling over hard seabed (common on seamounts) routinely removes most of the benthic fauna, resulting in declines in faunal biodiversity, cover and abundance, which translates into loss of biogenic habitat from potentially large areas.

TL;DR: In this paper, an approach is presented for describing functioning based on traits exhibited by members of biological assemblages, so the presence and distribution of such traits can be utilised to indicate aspects of functioning.

TL;DR: It is suggested that greater focus on life history ecology and on the links between marine species traits and ecosystem functioning are still needed to support trait-based indicator development.

TL;DR: The experts concluded that consideration of 8 attributes of the seabed system would provide adequate information to meet requirements of the MSFD, and that “Good Environmental Status” cannot be defined exclusively as “pristine Environmental status”, but rather status when impacts of all uses were sustainable.

TL;DR: Larger numbers of species are probably needed to reduce temporal variability in ecosystem processes in changing environments and to determine how biodiversity dynamics, ecosystem processes, and abiotic factors interact.

TL;DR: A framework using concepts and results from community ecology, ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology to provide a linkage between traits associated with the response of plants to environmental factors and traits that determine effects of plants on ecosystem functions is presented.

TL;DR: Crossfertilization between approaches based on species richness on the one hand, and on functional traits and types on the other, is a promising way of gaining mechanistic insight into the links between plant diversity and ecosystem processes and contributing to practical management for the conservation of diversity andcosystem services.