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Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers

In highly diverse systems such as coral reefs, many species appear to fulfil similar ecological roles, suggesting that they might be ecologically equivalent. However, even if species provide similar functions, the magnitude of those roles could modulate their impact within ecosystems. Here, we compa...

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Autores principales: Munger, Rachel, Watkins, Hannah V., Dunic, Jillian C., Côté, Isabelle M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36811006
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14823
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author Munger, Rachel
Watkins, Hannah V.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Côté, Isabelle M.
author_facet Munger, Rachel
Watkins, Hannah V.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Côté, Isabelle M.
author_sort Munger, Rachel
collection PubMed
description In highly diverse systems such as coral reefs, many species appear to fulfil similar ecological roles, suggesting that they might be ecologically equivalent. However, even if species provide similar functions, the magnitude of those roles could modulate their impact within ecosystems. Here, we compare the functional contributions of two common, co-occurring Caribbean sea cucumber species, Holothuria mexicana and Actynopyga agassizii, in terms of ammonium provisioning and sediment processing on Bahamian patch reefs. We quantified these functions through empirical measures of ammonium excretion, and in situ observations of sediment processing coupled with fecal pellet collections. On a per-individual level, H. mexicana excreted approximately 23% more ammonium and processed approximately 53% more sediment per hour than A. agassizii. However, when we combined these species-specific functional rates to species abundances to produce reef-wide estimates, we found that A. agassizii contributed more than H. mexicana to sediment processing at 57% of reefs (1.9 times more per unit area across all surveyed reefs), and more to ammonium excretion at 83% of reefs (5.6 times more ammonium per unit area across all surveyed reefs), owing to its higher abundance. We conclude that sea cucumber species can differ in the rates at which they deliver per capita ecosystem functions but their ecological impacts at the population level depend on their abundance at a given location.
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spelling pubmed-99390232023-02-20 Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers Munger, Rachel Watkins, Hannah V. Dunic, Jillian C. Côté, Isabelle M. PeerJ Conservation Biology In highly diverse systems such as coral reefs, many species appear to fulfil similar ecological roles, suggesting that they might be ecologically equivalent. However, even if species provide similar functions, the magnitude of those roles could modulate their impact within ecosystems. Here, we compare the functional contributions of two common, co-occurring Caribbean sea cucumber species, Holothuria mexicana and Actynopyga agassizii, in terms of ammonium provisioning and sediment processing on Bahamian patch reefs. We quantified these functions through empirical measures of ammonium excretion, and in situ observations of sediment processing coupled with fecal pellet collections. On a per-individual level, H. mexicana excreted approximately 23% more ammonium and processed approximately 53% more sediment per hour than A. agassizii. However, when we combined these species-specific functional rates to species abundances to produce reef-wide estimates, we found that A. agassizii contributed more than H. mexicana to sediment processing at 57% of reefs (1.9 times more per unit area across all surveyed reefs), and more to ammonium excretion at 83% of reefs (5.6 times more ammonium per unit area across all surveyed reefs), owing to its higher abundance. We conclude that sea cucumber species can differ in the rates at which they deliver per capita ecosystem functions but their ecological impacts at the population level depend on their abundance at a given location. PeerJ Inc. 2023-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9939023/ /pubmed/36811006 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14823 Text en ©2023 Munger et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Conservation Biology
Munger, Rachel
Watkins, Hannah V.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Côté, Isabelle M.
Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title_full Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title_fullStr Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title_full_unstemmed Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title_short Abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric Caribbean sea cucumbers
title_sort abundance modulates the ecosystem functional contributions of two sympatric caribbean sea cucumbers
topic Conservation Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9939023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36811006
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14823
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