Life cycle informed restoration: Engineering settlement substrate material characteristics and structural complexity for reef formation
Life cycle informed restoration: Engineering settlement substrate material characteristics and structural complexity for reef formation
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DOI：
10.1111/1365-2664.13968
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发表时间：
2021-08
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
R. Temmink;C. Angelini;G. Fivash;Laura Swart;Reinder Nouta;Malenthe Teunis;W. Lengkeek;K. Didderen;L. Lamers;T. Bouma;T. Heide
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作者：
R. Temmink;C. Angelini;G. Fivash;Laura Swart;Reinder Nouta;Malenthe Teunis;W. Lengkeek;K. Didderen;L. Lamers;T. Bouma;T. Heide
全世界的生态系统都在退化，造成了严重的生态和经济后果。恢复正在成为恢复生态系统服务和保护生物多样性的重要手段。然而，在由改变栖息地的生物主导的恶劣生态系统中，恢复往往是昂贵的，而且容易失败。这些生境调节剂的建立往往取决于个体聚集时出现的特征所产生的自我促进反馈，从而导致依赖于密度或斑块大小的建立阈值。为了克服这些阈值，成虫或幼虫栖息地形成物种通常以群集的设计方式移植，或者部署缓解应力的结构。然而，目前的修复方法侧重于引入或促进单一的生命阶段，而许多栖息地调节剂在其生命周期中经历了多个瓶颈，因为它们在连续的生命阶段过渡。在这里，我们定义并实验测试了“生命周期信息恢复”，这是一个专注于克服目标物种整个生命周期中的多个瓶颈的恢复概念。为了证明这一概念，并展示其普遍适用性，我们在佛罗里达州和荷兰的潮间带软沉积物系统中进行了补充实验，其中牡蛎和贻贝作为珊瑚礁建造栖息地的调节剂。我们使用了可生物降解的结构来促进双壳类珊瑚礁的恢复，通过刺激坚硬和纤维基质的沉降，以及通过减少捕食来促进沉降后的生存。我们的跨大西洋实验表明，这些结构通过：(a)通过物种特定的定居基质促进幼虫的招募，以及(b)通过降低捕食来提高定居后的存活率，从而促进双壳类珊瑚礁的形成。在荷兰，带有椰子绳的结构通过提供纤维沉降基质和降低捕食空间复杂的硬附着基质，最有力地促进了贻贝的生长。在佛罗里达，坚硬的底物极大地促进了牡蛎的生长，而椰子绳则被证明是不利的。合成与应用。我们的研究结果表明，人工生物可降解珊瑚礁可以通过模仿新出现的特征来改善形成珊瑚礁的生物生命周期中的多个瓶颈，从而增强大西洋双壳类珊瑚礁的恢复。这凸显了我们的方法作为一种具有成本效益的实用工具的潜力，可以帮助自然管理者恢复由栖息地调节剂主导的系统，这些系统的自然恢复受到多个生命阶段相关瓶颈的阻碍。因此，现在需要投资于了解如何在更大范围内实现生命周期知情恢复，以及该方法是否适用于恢复其他生态系统。
Ecosystems are degrading world‐wide, with severe ecological and economic consequences. Restoration is becoming an important tool to regain ecosystem services and preserve biodiversity. However, in harsh ecosystems dominated by habitat‐modifying organisms, restoration is often expensive and failure prone. Establishment of such habitat modifiers often hinges on self‐facilitation feedbacks generated by traits that emerge when individuals aggregate, causing density‐ or patch size‐dependent establishment thresholds. To overcome these thresholds, adult or juvenile habitat‐forming species are often transplanted in clumped designs, or stress‐mitigating structures are deployed. However, current restoration approaches focus on introducing or facilitating a single life stage, while many habitat modifiers experience multiple bottlenecks throughout their life as they transition through sequential life stages.Here, we define and experimentally test ‘life cycle informed restoration’, a restoration concept that focuses on overcoming multiple bottlenecks throughout the target species’ lifetime. To provide proof of concept, and show its general applicability, we carried out complementary experiments in intertidal soft‐sediment systems in Florida and the Netherlands where oysters and mussels act as reef‐building habitat modifiers. We used biodegradable structures designed to facilitate bivalve reef recovery by both stimulating settlement with hard and fibrous substrates and post‐settlement survival by reducing predation.Our trans‐Atlantic experiments demonstrate that these structures enabled bivalve reef formation by: (a) facilitating larval recruitment via species‐specific settlement substrates, and (b) enhancing post‐settlement survival by lowering predation. In the Netherlands, structures with coir rope most strongly facilitated mussels by providing fibrous settlement substrate, and predation‐lowering spatially complex hard attachment substrate. In Florida, oysters were greatly facilitated by hard substrates, while coir rope proved unbeneficial.Synthesis and applications. Our findings demonstrate that artificial biodegradable reefs can enhance bivalve reef restoration across the Atlantic by mimicking emergent traits that ameliorate multiple bottlenecks over the reef‐forming organism’ life cycle. This highlights the potential of our approach as a cost‐effective and practical tool for nature managers to restore systems dominated by habitat modifiers whose natural recovery is hampered by multiple life stage‐dependent bottlenecks. Therefore, investment in understanding how to achieve life cycle informed restoration on larger scales and whether the method it is applicable to restore other ecosystems is now required.