11th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (ISBW11). November 2014

From 6 to 10th of November took place in Sanya, China, the 11th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (ISBW11) organized by South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Science and sponsored by the World Seagrass Association (WSA) among others.

Under the main theme “Declining seagrasses in a changing world”, experts from all over the world presented  their latest works and discussed  about four main questions: 1) Ecosysems vulnerability and resilience, 2) Biodiversity and ecosystems services, 3) Management and restoration and 4) Key ecological processes.

Both temperate and tropical seagrasses are vulnerable to global changes caused by human activities (i.e. eutrophication), climate change (i.e. temperature increase), and natural  processes (i.e. tsunamis). Understanding how seagrasses respond to these changes is critical for future ecosystem management.

Our contribution to these conferences was with two oral presentations. Neus Sanmartí presented the study “Positive interactions between fan mussel and sea urchins in seagrass meadows: can it increase herbivory pressure?” This work showed how strong positive interactions between Pinna  nobilis and Paracentrotus  lividus within a Cymodocea nodosa meadow can affect indirectly the herbivory pressure on the plant.  Aurora M. Ricart followed with her presentation “The effects of landscape configuration on the exchange of materials across habitats on marine coastal ecosystems”. This work showed the effect of landscape configuration on the exchange of materials, an enhanced export of detrital leaves with reduction on seagrass patch size and a nitrogen limitation on leaves on reduced seagrass patches.

Aurora and Neus at ISBW11

Besides the excellent conference, we had also time for a field trip to know the Chinese tropical seagrass species and also to visit the city of Sanya and enjoy its  exotic food.

Xincun Bay. Sanya.

Enhalus acoroides

Thalassia hemprichii

Good chinese food

Skyline of Sanya

Aurora and Neus in Xincun Bay

Marine landscapes and its influence on herbivory: the importance of neighbors

Marine landscape has a deep, yet relatively unexplored, influence on ecosystem functions. We, ecologists, often transmit the biased impression that a given square meter of an underwater habitat (say, for example, of a seagrass meadow) follows exactly the same functional pattern, irrespectively of its context. Landscape ecology tells us that how a square meter of a given habitat works largely depends on how it is embedded in the mosaic of habitat patches in the sea bottom. In other words: ecological processes within a given habitat will depend on which are the habitat neighbors. In this complex scenario, herbivory plays an important role in population dynamics, composition, distribution, production and biodiversity of seagrass meadows.

As a part of a large collaborative research project (“ECOMOS: The influence of landscape mosaics in mediating functional interactions in marine ecosystems: an experimental approach”),  we examined herbivory in Cymodocea nodosa meadows, and compared the herbivory rates in different contexts, such as meadow edges, frontiers (between Cymodocea nodosa and Posidonia oceanica meadows, between meadows and rocky reefs) and central areas of large meadows. The study was conducted in the bay of Fornells in Minorca Island (Balearic Archipelago) in June 2014.

It was a hard underwater work to mark and measure hundreds of the thin C. nodosa leaves, which was eased by the outstanding beauty of the island and its underwater landscapes. Hope that this effort will render nice results in the next future…

 

Landscape and herbivory. Field work