Document of bibliographic reference 396739

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Diversity patterns of the South African azooxanthellate scleractinians (Cnidaria: Anthozoa), with considerations of environmental correlates

Abstract

Azooxanthellate scleractinian corals, a group of species that lack a symbiotic relationship with dinoflagellates, are influenced by environmental variables at various scales. As the global commitment to sustainably manage ocean ecosystems and resources rises, there is a growing need to describe biodiversity trends in previously unsampled areas. Benthic inver?tebrate research in South Africa is a developing field, and many taxa in deep water environ?ments remain inadequately characterized. Recently, the South African azooxanthellate scleractinian fauna was taxonomically reviewed, but their distributional correlations with physical parameters have not been studied. Here we aim to understand the biodiversity gra?dients of the South African azooxanthellate coral fauna by analysing the environmental cor?relates of museum samples. The associated coordinate data were georeferenced and depth obtained from a national bathymetric dataset, prior to undertaking a multivariate anal?ysis. This analysis encompassed several steps, including the grouping of the longitude and depth data (environmental data), identifying families characteristic of the group variability, and examining the correlation of the associated data with the biological data. Additionally, the analysis involved quantifying diversity patterns along the environmental gradients. Over?all, our results confirmed two longitudinal groups (eastern margin [Group A] vs southern and western margin [Group B]) and 11 depth categories represented within two bathymetric zones (shallow [50–200 m] and deep [300–1000 m]). Caryophylliids, flabellids, and dendro?phylliids contributed the most towards distinguishing longitudinal and depth gradients. Both abiotic variable (longitudinal and depth) partially explained coral distribution patterns, with depth being highly correlated to the species variation observed. Data limitations within our data set resulted to unexplained variance, however, despite these limitations, the study demonstrates that historical museum samples provide a valuable data source that can fill research sampling gaps and help improve the understanding of biodiversity patterns of the coral fauna in under sampled marine ecosystems.

Bibliographic citation

Filander, Z.; Sink, K.J.; Kitahara, M.V.; Cairns, S.D.; Lombard, A.T. (2024). Diversity patterns of the South African azooxanthellate scleractinians (Cnidaria: Anthozoa), with considerations of environmental correlates. PLoS One 19(8): e0296188. https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296188

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true