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      Multiple stressor effects on marine infauna: responses of estuarine taxa and functional traits to sedimentation, nutrient and metal loading

      Ellis, Joanne I.; Clark, Dana; Atalah, J.; Jiang, W.; Taiapa, Caine; Patterson, M.; Sinner, J.; Hewitt, Judi E.
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      2017 ellis clark atalah et al Scientific Reports.pdf
      Published version, 2.870Mb
      DOI
       10.1038/s41598-017-12323-5
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      Ellis, J., Clark, D., Atalah, J., Jiang, W., Taiapa, C., Patterson, M., … Hewitt, J. (2017). Multiple stressor effects on marine infauna: responses of estuarine taxa and functional traits to sedimentation, nutrient and metal loading. Scientific Reports, 7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-12323-5
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12916
      Abstract
      Sedimentation, nutrients and metal loading to coastal environments are increasing, associated with urbanization and global warming, hence there is a growing need to predict ecological responses to such change. Using a regression technique we predicted how maximum abundance of 20 macrobenthic taxa and 22 functional traits separately and interactively responded to these key stressors. The abundance of most taxa declined in response to sedimentation and metal loading while a unimodal response was often associated with nutrient loading. Optimum abundances for both taxa and traits occurred at relatively low stressor levels, highlighting the vulnerability of estuaries to increasing stressor loads. Individual taxa were more susceptible to stress than traits, suggesting that functional traits may be less sensitive for detecting changes in ecosystem health. Multiplicative effects were more common than additive interactions. The observed sensitivity of most taxa to increasing sedimentation and metal loading and the documented interaction effects between multiple stressors have important implications for understanding and managing the ecological consequences of eutrophication, sedimentation and contaminants on coastal ecosystems.
      Date
      2017
      Type
      Journal Article
      Publisher
      Nature Publishing Group
      Rights
      This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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