Abstract:

The BP oil crisis has brought home how little we know about benthic marine communities of the West Florida shelf, and how this lack of knowledge will limit our ability to assess impacts and plan remediation. The crisis also comes at the general time when marine resource management is undergoing a broad shift in focus from focusing on exploited species, to assessing ecosystems, and a necessary scaling up in our capacity to assess, monitor, and to generally better understand marine biodiversity. The objective of this proposal is to establish an integrative, biodiversity baseline for the rich, coral-sponge communities of the west Florida shelf, and to assess the impacts of the oil on these communities in the short term. Coral-sponge communities on the west Florida shelf are spatially extensive, biologically diverse habitats that harbor an abundance of marine resources, in particular of bottom fishes. With long-lived, photosymbiotic cnidarians and filter-feeding sponges contributing much of the habitat architecture, these habitats are especially sensitive to pollutants and global warming. We propose to undertake a large-scale biodiversity survey of these communities, covering all major components of the sessile and mobile biota at multiple locations along the shelf. We will thoroughly characterize the species diversity encountered using integrative taxonomic methods, and make this information broadly available and useful through images, DNA barcodes, and georeferenced specimen data. These resources will greatly facilitate future ecosystem-scale efforts on west Florida shelf habitats, and provide tools for analyses of food webs and recruitment patterns. We will also establish monitoring stations at three locations along the shelf. We will assess the structure and diversity of marine communities at these sites rapidly and at least once more toward the end of the project, to assess potential changes in community composition as a result of oil impact.

Suggested Citation:

Paulay, Gustav. 2015. Integrative biodiversity assessment of coral-sponge communities of W Florida shelf: establishing a baseline for a sensitive ecosystem, West Florida Shelf, March 2011 and May 2012. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/N7TM782X

Purpose:

The objectives of this project were to assess the diversity and community structure of the hard- bottom coral-sponge ecosystem along the W Florida shelf through biodiversity sampling and quantitative monitoring.

Data Parameters and Units:

Ninety-nine stations were surveyed along the shelf from the keys to the panhandle during three cruises, and many additional sites were surveyed from small boats, especially in the Big Bend region. Taxonomic teams covered algae (Craft), sponges (Biggs, Strimaitis, Wulff), cnidarians (Williams), polychaetes (Moore), bryozoans (Winston), crustaceans (Baeza, Evans, Hecht, Thomas), mollusks (Paulay, Slapcinsky), echinoderms (Lessios, Michonneau, Starmer), ascidians (Lotufo), and fish (Robins). Over 6000 lots of invertebrates of >1500 species were collected and vouchered at FLMNH, with the majority of these photo-documented, and subsampled for tissues, and samples of species sequenced for the DNA barcoding gene COI.

Methods:

Specimens were collected by diving, anchor dredge, otter trawl, and plankton net. Samples were sorted to morphospecies, narcotized, and fixed as appropriate for the taxon. Preliminary identification was completed in the field or during processing, further identification is ongoing through a network of specialists. Samples were curated into the FLMNH collections and databased. Taxonomic and occurrence data for these are available through the FLMNH Invertebrate Zoology collection database: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/scripts/dbs/malacol_pub.asp. GIS data of this and all other georeferenced records at FLMNH from Florida available through http://www.gbif.org/. Monitoring sites were set up in the Big Bend region on hard grounds at 9-12 m depths. Fish and macroinvertebrate communities were characterized by belt transects, bottom cover (algae and sessile animals) photogrammatically, and smaller fauna were monitored in ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures – set of stacked PVC settling plates). Sponge communities were further evaluated using permanent 10 m2 census plots, within which every sponge was marked, measured, and identified. Biodiversity (presence and relative abundance) of macroalgae, macroinvertebrates, and fish were recorded in timed-diversity surveys. In addition to the three sites per location set up for full-scale monitoring, additional sites were visited and evaluated by less-comprehensive methods, ranging from spot dives to documenting cover photogrammatically and biota through collections, photography, or timed-diversity searches. Photodatabase will be available through https://www.idigbio.org .

Instruments:

ARMS (Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures – set of stacked PVC settling plates)

Provenance and Historical References:

This dataset contains data from three cruises (RV Weatherbird 1, RV Weatherbird 2, and RV Bellows) that includes taxonomic information, location, habitat, and depth of species collected, which can be used as a reference to navigate the following databases: FLMNH Invertebrate Zoology collection database: http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/scripts/dbs/malacol_pub.asp GIS data available through http://www.gbif.org/ Photodatabase will available through https://www.idigbio.org

Individual Files: