Temperate rocky subtidal reef community reveals human impacts across the entire food web

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 567:1-16 (2017) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12057 FEATURE ARTICLE Temperate rocky subtidal reef community reveals human impacts across the entire food web Alejandro Pérez-Matus1,*, Andres Ospina-Alvarez2, Patricio A. Camus3, Sergio A. Carrasco1, Miriam Fernandez2,4, Stefan Gelcich2,4,5, Natalio Godoy5,6, F. Patricio Ojeda6, Luis Miguel Pardo7,8, Nicolás Rozbaczylo6, Maria Dulce Subida2, Martin Thiel9,10,11, Evie A. Wieters2, Sergio A. Navarrete2,6 Author affiliations Author affiliations 1Subtidal Ecology Laboratory & Center for Marine Conservation, Estación Costera de Investigaciones Marinas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 114-D, 2690931 Santiago, Chile2Center for Marine Conservation and Estación Costera de Investigaciones Marinas, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 114-D, 2690931 Santiago , Chile3Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Ambientes Sustentables (CIBAS), Departamento de Ecología, Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, Casilla 297, 4090541 Concepción, Chile4Laboratorio Internacional en Cambio Global (Lincglobal), Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 8331150 Santiago, Chile5Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (Capes), Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 8331150, Chile6Departamento de Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontifica Universidad Católica de Chile, 8331150 Santiago, Chile7Instituto de Ciencias Marinas y Limnológicas, Laboratorio Costero Calfuco, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, 5110566 Valdivia, Chile8Research Centre for the Dynamics of High Latitude Marine Ecosystems (IDEAL), Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, 5110566 Valdivia, Chile9Facultad Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte, Larrondo 1281, 1781421 Coquimbo, Chile. 10Millennium Nucleus Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Island (ESMOI), Coquimbo, Chile11Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas (CEAZA), 1781681 Coquimbo, Chile *Corresponding author: aperez@bio.puc.cl ABSTRACT: Food webs as representations of who eats whom are at the core of community ecology. Incorporation of tools from network theory enables assessment of how complex systems respond to natural and human-induced stressors, revealing how harvesting may degrade the properties and resilience of food webs. We present a comprehensive, coastal marine food web that includes 147 taxa co-occurring on shallow subtidal reefs along the highly productive and exploited Humboldt Current System of central Chile. This food web has connectance of 0.06, link density of 1204 and mean chain length of 4.3. The fractions of intermediate (76%), omnivorous (49%) and cannibalistic (8%) nodes are slightly lower than those observed in other marine food webs. Of the 147 nodes, 34 are harvested. Links to harvested nodes represented 50 to 100% of all trophic links of non-harvested nodes, illustrating the great impact that fishery pressure can have on the food web. The food web was compartmentalized into 5 sub-webs with high representation of harvested taxa. This structure changes if the fishery node is removed. Similarity analyses identified groups of harvested species with non-harvested nodes, suggesting that these tropho-equivalents could be sentinel species for the community-wide impacts of coastal fisheries. We conclude that fishing effects can be transmitted throughout the food web, with no compartments completely unaffected by harvesting. It is urgent to establish monitoring programs for community-wide effects of fisheries and assess whether resilience of these highly productive subtidal food webs has already been compromised, thereby identifying essential nodes that require stronger fisheries regulation. KEY WORDS: Network structure · Marine ecosystems · Fishery · Resilience · Chile Full text in pdf format Information about this Feature Article Supplementary material NextCite this article as: Pérez-Matus A, Ospina-Alvarez A, Camus PA, Carrasco SA and others (2017) Temperate rocky subtidal reef community reveals human impacts across the entire food web. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 567:1-16. https://doi.org/10.3354/meps12057 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 567. Online publication date: March 13, 2017 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2017 Inter-Research.