Functional diversity in extreme marine environments

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There is growing concern over anthropogenic impacts on the deep ocean, home of the world’s largest and most poorly known ecosystems. This programme will develop and apply functional ecology approaches in two ecosystems to assess responses to human activities and global changes. Functional diversity is a useful tool for comparing communities in different habitats and regions. The animals endemic to hydrothermal vents on tectonic spreading ridges are adapted to extreme habitat conditions. A Canadian company plans to start deep-sea mining in 2017 in the South Pacific targeting the metal-rich chimney deposits that form much of the habitat at long-lived sites. My work has amassed decades of data on hydrothermal vent diversity and animal characteristics, especially off the Canadian coast. Our work will develop functional trait approaches to compare abundance-based diversity indices at vent sites along the Juan de Fuca/Explorer Ridges. With funded cruises at vent sites off Tonga (one a mining prospect), we will use the refined methods to examine functional diversity between high versus low “quality” mine targets. A third field site lies in another biogeographic region (Mariana) where the same techniques will support a pan-Pacific functional diversity comparison. Studies on key species, particularly the large animals that host symbionts, will extend known functional traits and facilitate inter-region comparisons. We collaborate with other researchers to amass data and test analyses; it will be the first to make a full functional assessment of the hot vent system with an open access trait database.