Yuting Vicky Lin, Pierre-Alexandre Château, Yoko Nozawa, Chih-Lin Wei , Rainer Ferdinand Wunderlich, Vianney Denis
A study by Dr. Yuting Vicky Lin, Profs. Vianney Denis, and Chih-Lin Wei from National Taiwan University, in collaboration with Prof. Pierre-Alexandre Château from Sun Yat-sen University, Prof. Yoko Nozawa from the University of Ryukyus, Japan, and Dr. Rainer Ferdinand Wunderlich from INRAE, France, had been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin in May 2024. This research investigated how different environmental factors affect communities of marine organisms living on the seabed in coastal areas (i.e., benthic communities), which is important for deciding which factors need to be controlled. They collected data from 433 transects around Taiwan, including information on benthic composition and 21 environmental factors describing the physical environment, the chemicals in the water, the disturbance history and human activities on land. By analyzing these data, they were able to identify five types of communities dominated by different types of organisms, including crustose coralline algae, turf algae, stony corals, and digitate and bushy soft corals. They found that factors such as light intensity, nitrite levels, and population density were the most important in determining community types. Surprisingly, historical factors such as typhoons and abnormally high temperature had less influence. They also discovered that turf algae are widely distributed in Taiwan and are strongly promoted by human activities on land and nutrient enrichment. This suggests that human activities are making benthic communities in Taiwan more similar to each other, which could mask the effects of climate change and natural differences between regions. To protect these communities in Taiwan, it is important to control nutrient levels in the water and reduce pollution from the land. This will help these communities remain resilient in the face of climate change.
Reference
Lin, Y. V., Château, P. A., Nozawa, Y., Wei, C. L., Wunderlich, R. F., & Denis, V. (2024). Drivers of coastal benthic communities in a complex environmental setting. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 203, 116462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2024.116462
