Journal
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
Volume 61, Issue -, Pages 850-864Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.10.038
Keywords
Marine; Intertidal; Nutrient enrichment; Biological quality elements; Comparative response; Opportunist/sensitive taxa
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Funding
- Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) through the Portuguese Operational Human Potential Program (POPH)
- Portuguese National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN Portugal)
- Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education (MCTES) [SFRH/BD/74524/2010, SFRH/BD/108224/2015, SFRH/BD/82014/2011]
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/82014/2011, SFRH/BD/74524/2010, SFRH/BD/108224/2015] Funding Source: FCT
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The compliance of macroalgal and macroinvertebrate assemblages to anthropogenic disturbance gradients (e.g., nutrient enrichment) was investigated at intertidal rocky shores. Macroalgae and macroinvertebrates presented parallel behavior, both showing shifts in the communities' structural variation along the gradients, in which an higher number of opportunistic species (and higher abundances) were found in more stressful sites (close to the disturbance source), in contrast to less disturbed sites (far from the disturbance source), which showed higher presence of more sensitive species (and higher abundance of several of them). The macroinvertebrate abundance and taxonomic composition, which are parameters required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD) to be included in tools for the ecological quality status assessment, responded to the disturbance gradient. Results suggest that the macroinvertebrate biological element might be considered an indicator of disturbance in intertidal rocky shores as good as the macroalgae, and therefore the development of a specific methodology based solely on benthic macroinvertebrates of rocky shores, presently a gap in the ecological quality status assessment for the WFD, seems feasible. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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