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Si us plau utilitzeu sempre aquest identificador per citar o enllaçar aquest document: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/68396
Scale-dependent factors modulate sea urchin predation in macrophyte communities
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[eng] Many nearshore temperate coastal ecosystems are strongly regulated by top-down control. This is particularly true of shallow macrophyte communities, where habitat structuring is heavily dependent on the ability of predators to control populations of herbivorous sea urchins. Released from predation pressure, urchins can quickly transform macroalgal ecosystems to unproductive barrens. While temperate seagrasses are less dramatically affected, top-down processes still play critical roles in mediating trophic interactions and habitat structure. There has been considerable attention paid to understanding the role predator numbers (mostly fish) play in influencing the strength of predator-prey interactions in macrophyte communities. However, several factors apart from abundance can influence these interactions, which have received far less attention. In this thesis, I examine how the structure of the habitat itself can mediate top trophic interactions and how these processes vary with spatial scale. I begin by exploring how predation activity varies in relation to Posidonia oceanica habitat structure. Meadows can vary considerably in their structural attributes, and in the first Chapter I examine how canopy height and the height of the unburied rhizome matte influence predation intensity. My results show that meadow structure (canopy height and unburtied matte height) within habitats play critical roles in determining predation rates in these systems by mediating the availability of benthic refuge for urchins. I carry this work forward in Chapter two by comparing relative rates of predation across a gradient of increasing habitat structure across macrophyte communities (turf habitats, macroalgal habitats, low structured seagrass and high structured seagrass). To make these results generalizable, I compared these predation patterns across three different regional seascapes — the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Western Australia — each with their own unique guild of fish and benthic predators. Habitat structure clearly regulated predation in all regions, but interestingly, the direction of its influence was highly dependent on the predator guild; regions dominated by visual fish predators showed a negative relationship between predation intensity and habitat structure, whereas where benthic predators (sea stars or molluscs) were common, predation increased with structure. How nearshore habitats are distributed in space (patch configuration, the spatial relationship between patches, aggregation patterns, etc.) can have strong effects on how predators and prey species move between and within habitats and, in Chapter three I examined the influence these landscape mosaic features had on modifying trophic interactions. My results indicate that these mosaics can generate lumpiness in the distribution of trophic function, with cold- and hot-spots of predation dependent on area-perimeter relationships, the presence of rocky substrates or the degree of habitat clumping in space. Overall, my thesis provides critical insights on how the predation function varies across scales in nearshore marine macrophyte communities. Sea urchins are often a keystone herbivore in these systems, and my thesis shows that their control is heavily influenced by the habitat itself. In particular, habitat can: (i) modify the interaction strength as a function of structure, (ii) can change the direction of the interaction depending on the dominant predator guild and (iii) generate hotspots of predation as a function of spatial configuration. My work indicates that predator abundance, while critical, does not reflect the true complexity of predator-prey interactions. Given the importance of predator-urchin dynamics to the functioning of nearshore macrophyte habitats, we need much more understanding of habitat characteristics at fine and large scales to be able to effectively manage these systems and the functions they embody.
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FARINA, Simone. Scale-dependent factors modulate sea urchin predation in macrophyte communities. [consulta: 28 de novembre de 2025]. [Disponible a: https://hdl.handle.net/2445/68396]