Biodiversity in Coastal Ecosystems

A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818). This special issue belongs to the section "Biodiversity Conservation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 4155

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain
Interests: conservation biology; invasive species; wildlife conservation; climate change; ecology and evolution; marine ecology; ecosystem ecology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Coastal ecosystems are among the ecosystems with higher biodiversity richness on our planet. They include both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. They are also home for almost half of the human population, which gives an idea of the high anthropogenic pressure that the biodiversity of these ecosystems is suffering. These pressures include the overexploitation of natural resources, habitat loss, the introduction of non-native species, and climate change. These pressures lead to a high risk not only of biodiversity loss, but also for the loss of goods and services that these ecosystems provide to humankind. There is an urgent need to implement sustainable management based on the best available scientific knowledge to preserve the function and processes of coastal ecosystems, and with them their high biodiversity. There is a need to increase our knowledge of the biodiversity of these ecosystems and how to prevent biodiversity extinctions, as it is much simpler to maintain biodiversity than to restore it. New strategies to harmonize the protection of biodiversity and human development must be generated. This Special Issue provides an opportunity to highlight new research on the biodiversity of coastal ecosystems and new insights into how to preserve these important ecosystems.

Dr. Eduardo J. Belda
Guest Editor

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 1515 KiB  
Article
Trait-Based Investigation Reveals Patterns of Community Response to Nutrient Enrichment in Coastal Mesic Grassland
by Joseph K. Brown and Julie C. Zinnert
Diversity 2021, 13(1), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/d13010019 - 6 Jan 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3154
Abstract
Despite recent advances, we still do not understand how chronic nutrient enrichment impacts coastal plant community structure and function. We aimed to clarify such impacts by testing for differences in ecosystem productivity and multiple community metrics in response to fertilization. We established plots [...] Read more.
Despite recent advances, we still do not understand how chronic nutrient enrichment impacts coastal plant community structure and function. We aimed to clarify such impacts by testing for differences in ecosystem productivity and multiple community metrics in response to fertilization. We established plots in 2015 consisting of control (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and nitrogen + phosphorus (NP) treatments in a mid-Atlantic coastal grassland. In 2017 we collected aboveground biomass, functional traits, and species abundance for each plot. Our findings indicate a synergistic co-limitation, such that NP plots were more productive than all other treatments. A combination of traits responsible for competition and nutrient uptake (i.e., height and δ15N) caused trait-based divergence of N and NP plots from C and P plots. Functional trait-based composition patterns differed from species composition and lifeform abundance patterns, highlighting complexities of community response to nutrient enrichment. While trait-based functional alpha-diversity did not differ among nutrient treatments, it was positively correlated with biomass production, suggesting nutrients may impact functional alpha-diversity indirectly through increased productivity. Increased functional alpha-diversity could be a mechanism of co-existence emerging as productivity increases. These results have important implications for understanding how plant communities in low-productivity coastal systems are altered by fertilization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity in Coastal Ecosystems)
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