Search results for "Sea urchin barren"
showing 2 items of 2 documents
Warmer temperatures reduce the influence of an important keystone predator
2017
Predator–prey interactions may be strongly influenced by temperature variations in marine ecosystems. Consequently, climate change may alter the importance of predators with repercussions for ecosystem functioning and structure. In North-eastern Pacific kelp forests, the starfish Pycnopodia helianthoides is known to be an important predator of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. Here we investigated the influence of water temperature on this predator–prey interaction by: (i) assessing the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of both species across a temperature gradient in the northern Channel Islands, California, and (ii) investigating how the feeding rate of P. heli…
Macroalgal forest vs sea urchin barren: Patterns of macro-zoobenthic diversity in a large-scale Mediterranean study: Macro-zoobenthos of barren and m…
2020
The study aimed at contributing to the knowledge of alternative stable states by evaluating the differences of mobile and sessile macro-zoobenthic assemblages between sea urchin barrens and macroalgal forests in coastal Mediterranean systems considering a large spatial scale. Six sites (100 s km apart) were selected: Croatia, Montenegro, Sicily (Italy), Sardinia (Italy), Tuscany (Italy), and Balearic Islands (Spain). A total of 531 taxa, 404 mobile and 127 sessile macro-invertebrates were recorded. Overall, 496 and 201 taxa were found in macroalgal forests and in barrens, respectively. The results of this large-scale descriptive study have met the expectation of lower macrofauna complexity …