High-Throughput Techniques As Support for Knowledge-Based Spatial Conservation Prioritization in Mangrove Ecosystems

Abstract

The conservation of functioning ecosystems worldwide is warranted by the need for reliable and sustainable provision of ecosystem services locally, regionally and globally. Mangroves provide numerous ecosystem services both to local human communities, e.g., coastal protection or food security, and to mankind worldwide, e.g., climate change-mitigation. Nonetheless they still lack protection in many places of occurrence. Here we base spatial prioritization and planning of mangrove conservation on functional biodiversity and service-relevant ecosystem processes, being studied through cutting-edge genetic and chemical analyses of sediments to unravel the links between biodiversity, biotic interactions, ecosystem processes and ecosystem services. We nonetheless recommend multidisciplinary approaches when planning protected area networks for the sustainable use and provision of ecosystem services and pledge for (i) considering and prioritizing societal, biological and economic values of mangroves, (ii) integrating adjacent ecosystems to maintain connectivity, and (iii) taking into account the spatial and temporal dynamics of mangrove ecosystems and their community composition under global change, i.e. changes in the spatial distribution of species and services over time. Beyond the example of mangroves and the turnover of organic matter in mangrove sediments described herein, our approach to spatial conservation prioritization and planning is applicable to any other ecosystems and their services.

Appendices

Appendices

1.1 Appendix I: The Biodiversity Procession

Biodiversity (BD)

– degree of variation of the living world, including genetic variation, species variation (community structure) and ecosystem variation .

Biotic Interactions (BI)

– organisms interact with each other, both intraspecifically and interspecifically, e.g., through competition, facilitation, predation, mutualism, parasitism.

Service-Providing Units (SPU)

– units of interacting organisms (individuals, populations, communities) providing the functional basis for services delivered by a functioning ecosystem.

Ecosystem Processes (EP)

– physical, chemical and biological activities or reactions that link organisms and their environment, such as production or decomposition.

Ecosystem Function (EF)

– sensu De Groot (1992), EF is defined as “the capacity of natural processes and components to provide goods and services that satisfy human needs directly or indirectly”. This denomination relies strongly on the human perspective, as it will depend on what humans expect ecosystems to deliver, being considered their function.

Ecosystem-Functioning (EFg)

– referring to De Groot et al. (2002), internal ecosystem functioning refers to the maintenance of energy fluxes, nutrient cycling, including food-web interactions. As such, the aggregate of EP warrants the functioning of an ecosystem as entity in delivering functions and ecosystem services.

Ecosystem Services (ES)

– According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA 2005), “ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems”. They can be categorized into: provisioning services such as food- and water-supply; regulating services such as the regulation of floods, droughts, land degradation and diseases; supporting services such as soil formation, and nutrient cycling; and cultural services, such as the offer of recreation, spiritual, religious, and other nonmaterial benefits (see e.g., Vo et al. 2012).

1.2 Appendix II: Glossary

Ancient DNA (aDNA)

– sensu Bohmann et al. (2014), it refers to the DNA extracted from samples that have not been intentionally taken for genetic analysis (such as archaeological finds for example). Here we also refer to eDNA that is found in historical samples, such as deep cores of ice or soil/sediment.

Barcoding

– sensu stricto it refers to the identification of organisms to the species level using standardized DNA fragments (barcodes). Sensu lato, it refers to the identification of organisms at any taxonomical level using any DNA fragment (Valentini et al. 2009). Barcoding is generally applied to tissue or any DNA trace originating from a single organism while metabarcoding (see below) is applied to DNA samples of mixed composition.

Ecosystem Engineers

– species that are able to create, modify or maintain physical habitat for themselves and other species by significantly changing abiotic environmental conditions (Jones et al. 1994).

Environmental DNA (eDNA)

– DNA that can be recovered from environmental samples (e.g. soil/sediments, water, permafrost, faeces), without prior isolation of specific organisms; as such, eDNA is composed of a mixture of genomic DNA from various organisms, and composed of cellular DNA (from living cells) and degraded extracellular DNA (from dead cells) released upon cell structure destruction (see Taberlet et al. 2012a and references therein).

Foundation Species

– dominant species that, through their considerable abundance and biomass, have a strong effect on other species, by creating conditions and stabilizing fundamental ecosystem processes, and thus community composition and biodiversity (Dayton 1972; Whitham et al. 2006).

Keystone Species

– species that have a strong effect on other species, and thus community composition and biodiversity, by virtue of strong interactions with, or other indirect effects on, other species rather than of their abundance or biomass; keystone species can be rare (Power et al. 1996).

Metabarcoding

simultaneous identification of multiple species or taxa (depending on the taxonomic resolution) from bulk (containing several organisms) or environmental (containing degraded DNA) samples (Taberlet et al. 2012b).

Metabolic Fingerprinting

– MS-based metabolomics approach where “a global snapshot of the metabolism is acquired and compared without performing quantification and chemical identification” (Du and Zeisel 2013).

1.3 Appendix III: Traffic Light for Conservation-Planning

To increase acceptance for strictly protected areas in societies that depend on, and make use of, natural resources, alternative uses and/or alternative sources of resources must be offered. Based on the knowledge gained from the combination of traditional knowledge, social-ecological and socio-economic analyses, ecological studies (including predictive models of future distributions of species and their interactions (SPUs)) and the conservation-omics approach described herein, forecasting the fate and value of particular areas is possible. The outcome of these approaches can be translated into recommendations for spatial conservation prioritization with respect to which areas should be strictly protected (because they are valuable and delicate or sensitive to disturbance and stressors), which areas can bear sustainable use (because they are resistant or resilient to disturbance and stressors), and which areas might be declared available for open use, such as the development of infrastructure or agri- and aquaculture (because they are of little value and/or have low chances of remaining valuable over time).