Facilitation of animals is stronger during summer marine heatwaves and around morphologically complex foundation species.

ABSTRACT: Foundation species create biogenic habitats, modify environmental conditions, augment biodiversity, and control animal community structures. In recent decades, marine heatwaves (MHWs) have affected the ecology of foundation species worldwide, and perhaps also their associated animal communities. However, no realistic field experiment has tested how MHWs affect animals that live in and around these foundation species. We therefore tested, in a four-factorial field experiment, if colonisation by small mobile marine animals (epifauna) onto plates with attached single versus co-occurring foundation species of different morphological complexities, were affected by 3-5°C heating (that mirrored a recent extreme MHW in the study area) and if the heating effect on the epifauna varied within and bet

SUBMITTER: Montie S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10505761 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature