Abstract
Exploitation of deep-sea resources is now underway and there is economic pressure to renew and expand currently restricted waste disposal in that environment. Since the deep sea is noted for very high species diversity, it is appropriate that diversity conservation be initiated. Review of current concepts of diversity maintenance finds that the ideas have evolved more through increasing information about sources of heterogeneity than through rigorous testing. This history weakens the immediate value of these concepts for the development of conservation strategies and demonstrates the need for additional investigation. Such inquiry might focus upon the rare component of overall species richness. A comparison of box core samples at 2100m in the western Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico continental shelf reveals that deep soft bottoms are not unique in having many rare species. The rare component at depth is largely comprised of species more common at other locations near and far. The rare component on the shelf is comprised mostly of species which are consistently rare and restricted in distribution. These observations suggest a shallow–deep difference that is more one of degree than fundamental in nature; the deep having larger regions and regional species pools.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Able, L.G. and Walters, K. (1979) Marine benthic diversity: a critique and alternative explanation. J. Biogeog. 6, 115–26.
Blake, J.A. and Grassle, J.F. (1994) Benthic community structure on the U.S. South Atlantic slope off the Carolinas: spatial heterogeneity in a current-dominated system. Deep-Sea Res. II 41, 835–74.
Brandt, A. (1995) Pericarid fauna (Crustacea, Malacostraca) of the northeast water polynya off Greenland: documenting close benthic-pelagic coupling in the Westwind Torugh. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 121, 39–51.
Butman, C.A. and Carlton, J.T. (1995) Marine biological diversity: some important issues, opportunities and critical needs. Reviews of Geophysics, Supplement, p. 1201–9. US National Report to International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics 1991–1994.
Carney, R.S. (1987) A review of study designs for the detection of long-term environmental effects of offshore petroleum activities. In Long-term environmental effects of offshore oil and gas development (D.F. Boesch and N.N. Rabalais, eds) pp. 651–696. New York: Elsevier.
Carney, R.S. (1995) On the adequacy and improvement of marine benthic pre-impact surveys: examples from the Gulf of Mexico continental shelf. In Detecting ecological impacts: concepts and application in coastal habitats (R.J. Schmidt and C.W. Osenburg, eds) pp. 295–315. New York: Academic Press.
Carney, R.S., Haedrich, R.L. and Rowe, G.T. (1983) Zonation of fauna in the deep sea. In The Sea Vol. 8 (G.T. Rowe, ed.) pp. 371–398. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Dayton, P. and Hessler, R.R. (1972) The role of disturbance in the maintenance of deep-sea diversity. Deep-Sea Res. 19, 199–208.
Ekman, J.E. and Thistle, D. (1991) Effects of flow about a biologically produced structure on harpacticoid copepods in the San Diego Trough. Deep-Sea Res. 38, 1397–1416.
Ekman, S. (1935) Tiergeographie des Meeres, 1st edition, Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft.
Etter, R.J. and Grassle, J.F. (1992) Patterns of species diversity in the deep sea as a function of sediment particle size diversity. Nature 360, 576–8.
Flint, R.W. and Rabalais, N.N. (eds) (1981) Environmental studies of a marine ecosystem: south Texas outer continental shelf. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Gage, J.D. and Tyler, P.A. (1991) Deep-sea biology: a natural history of organisms at the deep-sea floor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, E.D. (1981) The oceans as waste space; the argument. Oceanus 24, 2–9.
Grassle, J.F. (1989) Species diversity in deep-sea communities. Trends Ecol. Evol. 4, 12–15.
Grassle, J.F. and Sanders, H.L. (1973) Life histories and the role of disturbance. Deep-Sea Res. 20, 643–59.
Grassle, J.F. and Morse-Porteus, L.S. (1987) Macrofaunal colonization of disturbed deep-sea environments and the structure of deep-sea benthic communities. Deep-Sea Res. 34, 1911–50.
Grassle, J.F. and Maciolek, N.J. (1992) Deep-sea species richness: regional and local diversity estimates from quantitative bottom samples. Am. Nat. 139, 331–41.
Gray, J.S. (1974) Animal-sediment relationships. Oceanog. Mar. Biol. Ann. Rev. 12, 223–61.
Gray, J.S. (1994) Is deep-sea species diversity really so high? Species diversity of the Norwegian continental shelf. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 112, 205–9.
Hoaglan, P. (1993) Manganese nodule price trends: dim prospects for the commercialization of deep seabed mining. Resources Policy, 287–98.
Hollister, C.D., Anderson, D.R. and Heath, G.R. (1981) Subseabed disposal of nuclear wastes? Science 213, 1321–6.
Huston, M.A. (1979) A general hypothesis of species diversity. Am. Nat. 113, 81–101.
Huston, M.A. (1994) Biological diversity: the coexistence of species on changing landscapes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hutchinson, G.E. (1959) Homage to Santa Rosalia: or why are there so many animals? Am. Nat. 93, 145–59.
Janzen, D.H. (1970) Herbivores and the number of tree species in tropical forests. Am. Nat. 104, 501–29.
Jeffreys, J.G. (1881) Deep-sea exploration. Nature 21, 300–2.
Jumars, P.A. (1981) Limits in predicting and detecting benthic community responses to manganese nodule mining. Mar. Mining 3, 213–29.
Jumars, P.A. and Gallagher, E.D. (1979) Deep-sea community structure: three plays on the benthic proscenium. In The Environment of the Deep Sea (W.G. Ernst and G. Marine, eds) pp. 217–255. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Jumars, P.A. and Eckman, J.E. (1983) Spatial structure within deep-sea benthic communities. In The Sea Vol. 8 (G.T. Rowe, ed.) pp. 399–452. New York: John Wiley Sons.
Jumars, P.A., Mayer, L.M., Deming, J.W., Baross, J.A. and Wheatcroft, R.A. (1990) Deep-sea deposit feeding strategies suggested by environmental feeding constraints. Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. Lond. Ser. A 331, 85–101.
Kukert, H. and Smith, C.R. (1992) Disturbance, colonization, and succession in a deep-sea sediment community: artificial mound experiments. Deep Sea Res. 39, 1349–71.
Lampitt, R.S. (1985) Evidence for the seasonal deposition of detritus to the deep-sea floor and its subsequent resuspension. Deep-Sea Res. 32, 885–97.
Levins, R. (1968) Evolution in changing environments, some theoretical explorations. Monographs in population biology. Princeton: Princeton University.
May, R.M. (1975) Patterns of species abundance and diversity. In Ecology and evolution of communities (M.L. Cody and J.M. Diamond, eds) pp. 81–120. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McLaughlin, J.F. and Roughgarden, J. (1993) Species interactions in space. In Species diversity in ecological communities: historical and geographical perspectives (R.E. Ricklefs and D. Schluter, eds) pp. 77–88. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mosely, H.N. (1880) Dredging and life in the deep-sea. Nature 21, 543–9, 569–73, 591–93.
Murray, J. (1895) A summary of the scientific results obtained at the sounding, dredging, and trawling stations of H.M.S. Challenger. Challenger Report Summary of Research Vol. 2, pp. 797–1608.
National Research Council (1995) Understanding marine biodiversity: a research agenda for the nation. Washington: National Academy of Science Press.
Norse, E.A. (ed.) (1993) Global marine biological diversity: a strategy for building conservation into decision making. Washington: Island Press.
Palmer, H.D. (1988) Waste disposal in the Atlantic continental margin. In The Atlantic Continental Margin, The Geology of North America Vol. I-2 (R.E. Sheridan and J.A. Grow, eds) pp. 583–93. U.S. Geological Society of America.
Palowitch, A.W., Hightower, J.M., Richards, W., Balinski, S., Briggs, W., Foster, T., Mauck, D. and Marcy, A. (1995) Technical assessment of methods for waste isolation on the abyssal sea floor. Proceedings, OCEANS' 95 Conference, San Diego, CA; Vol. 3 9–12 October, 1995.
Pielou, E.C. (1969) An introduction to mathematical ecology. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Prance, G.T. (ed.) (1982) The biological model for diversification in the tropics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rex, M.A. (1983) Geographic patterns of species diversity in the deep-sea benthos. In The Sea. Vol. 8 (G. Rowe, ed.) pp. 453–72. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Rex, M.A., Stuart, C.T., Hesseler, R.R., Allen, J.A., Sanders, H.L. and Wilson, G.D.F. (1993) Global-scale latitudinal patterns of species diversity in the deep-sea benthos. Nature 365, 636–9.
Rex, M.A., Etter, R.J. and Stuart, C.T. (in press) Large-scale patterns of species diversity in the deep-sea. In Marine Biodiversity: Causes and Consequences (R. Ormond and J.D. Gage, eds).
Ricklefs, R.E. (1987) Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes. Science 235, 167–71.
Ricklefs, R.E. and Schulter, D. (eds.) (1993) Species diversity in ecological communities: historical and geographical perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rowe, G.T. and Pariente, V. (eds) (1992) Deep-sea food chains and the global carbon cycle. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Sanders, H., Hesseler, R.R. and Hampson, G.R. (1965) An introduction to the study of the deep-sea benthic faunal assemblages along the Gay Head-Bermuda transect. Deep-Sea Res. 12, 845–67.
Schaff, T.R. and Levin, L.A. (1994) Spatial heterogeneity of benthos associated with biogenic structures on the North Carolina continental slope. Deep-Sea Res. II 41, 901–18.
Schnitker, D. (1979) The deep waters of the western Atlantic during the past 24,000 years, and the reinitiation of the Western Boundary Undercurrent. Mar. Micropaleontol. 4, 265–80.
Slobodkin, L. and Sanders, H.L. (1969) On the contribution of environmental predictability to species diversity. Diversity and stability in ecological systems. Brookhaven Symposia in Biology 22, 82–95.
Smith, C.R. (1994) Tempo and Mode in deep-sea benthic ecology: punctuated equilibrium revisited. Palaios 9, 3–13.
Smith, C.R., Jumars, P.A. and DeMaster, D.J. (1986) In situ studies of megafaunal mounds indicate rapid sediment turnover and community response at the deep-sea floor. Nature 323, 251–3.
Smith, W. and Grassle, J.F. (1977) Sampling properties of a family of diversity measures. Biometrics 33, 283–92.
Smith, W., Grassle, J.F. and Kravitz, D. (1979) Measures of diversity with unbiased estimates. In Ecological diversity in theory and practice (J.F. Grassle, G.P. Patil, W. Smith and C. Taille, eds) pp. 171–91. Fairland, MD: International Co-operative Publishing House.
Snelgrove, P.V.R., Grassle, J.F. and Petrecca, R.F. (1992) The role of food patches in maintaining high deep-sea diversity: field experiments with hydrodynamically unbiased colonization trays. Limnol. Oceanog. 37, 1543–50.
Stuxburg, A. (1883) Researches on the deep-sea fauna from a zoogeographic point of view. Nature 23, 394–7.
Sverdrup, H.U., Johnson, M.W. and Fleming, R.H. (1942) The Oceans: their physics, chemistry, and general biology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Terborgh, J. and Winter, B. (1980) Some causes of extinction. In Conservation Biology (M.E. Soule and B. Wilcox, eds) pp. 119–33. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.
Thistle, D. (1983) The stability-time hypothesis as a predictor of diversity in deep-sea soft-bottom communities: a test. Deep-Sea Res. 30, 267–77.
Thistle, D., Yingst, J.Y. and Fauchald, K. (1985) A deep-sea benthic community exposed to strong near-bottom currents on the Scotian Rise (western Atlantic). Mar. Geol. 66, 91–112.
Tyler, P.A. (1995) Conditions for the existence of life at the deep-sea floor. Oceanog. Mar. Biol. Ann. Rev. 33, 221–44.
Visual Numerics (1994) PV-WAVE Command Language Users Guide. Boulder, CO: Visual Numerics.
Voight, J.R. and Walker, S.E. (1995) Geographic variation of shell bionts in the deep-sea snail Gaza. Deep-Sea Res. I 42, 1261–71.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carney, R.S. Basing conservation policies for the deep-sea floor on current-diversity concepts: a consideration of rarity. Biodiversity and Conservation 6, 1463–1485 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018310302215
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018310302215