Establishment of metacommunity approach toward conservation of coastal biological community in varying environment

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To provide scientific information for the conservation and management of coastal ecosystems and resources, the present study carried out an integrated approach to investigate structure and dynamics of coastal marine community and their changes in relation to global climate change such as temperature rise. We specially targeted on seagrass bed, rocky intertidal and kelp forest communities as model systems. We conducted broad-scale, long-term monitoring of these communities based on periodical census and the use of remote sensing and GIS analyses, statistical analyses on meta-community structure, genetic analyses based on molecular data, and field manipulative experiments. The results demonstrated that structures of coastal communities are affected by multiple factors that operate at different spatial scales, and that their dynamics can be unstable with ongoing climate change through modification of species interaction processes between producers and consumers.