Characterising and predicting benthic biodiversity for conservation planning in deepwater environments.

ABSTRACT: Understanding patterns of biodiversity in deep sea systems is increasingly important because human activities are extending further into these areas. However, obtaining data is difficult, limiting the ability of science to inform management decisions. We have used three different methods of quantifying biodiversity to describe patterns of biodiversity in an area that includes two marine reserves in deep water off southern Australia. We used biological data collected during a recent survey, combined with extensive physical data to model, predict and map three different attributes of biodiversity: distributions of common species, beta diversity and rank abundance distributions (RAD). The distribution of each of eight common species was unique, although all the species respond to a depth-corr

SUBMITTER: Dunstan PK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3350518 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature