Abstract
Background: The relationship between species diversity and components of ecosystem stability has been extensively studied, whilst the influence of the genetic component of biodiversity remains poorly understood. Here we manipulated both genotypic and allelic richness of the seagrass Zostera noltii, in order to explore their respective influences on the resistance of the experimental population to stress. Thus far intra-specific diversity was seldom taken into account in management plans, and restoration actions showed very low success. Information is therefore needed to understand the factors affecting resistance and resilience of populations.Results: Our results show a positive influence of both allelic and genotypic richness on the resistance of meadows to environmental perturbations. They also show that at the low genotypic (i.e. clonal) richness levels used in prior experimental approaches, the effects of genotypic and allelic richness could not be disentangled and allelic richness was a likely hidden treatment explaining at least part of the effects hitherto attributed to genotypic richness.Conclusions: Altogether, these results emphasize the need to acknowledge and take into account the interdependency of both genotypic and allelic richness in experimental designs attempting to estimate their importance alone or in combination. A positive influence of allelic richness on resistance to perturbations, and of allelic richness combined with genotypic richness on the recovery (resilience) of the experimental populations is supported by differential mortality. These results, on the key species structuring of one of the most threatened coastal ecosystem worldwide, seagrass meadows, support the need to better take into account the distinct compartments of clonal and genetic diversity in management strategies, and in possible restoration plans in the future.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 39 |
| Journal | BMC Ecology |
| Volume | 13 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 23 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by the project DIVSTAB (POCI/MAR/60179/2004) of the Portuguese Science Foundation and FEDER, and by the project Clonix (ANR-11-BSV7-007) of the French National Research Agency. Sónia Massa was funded by the fellowship SFRH/BD/46785/2008 of the Portuguese Science Foundation. We thank João Reis and Miguel Viegas for their invaluable help having made possible the setup of experimental tanks, and Nélson Coelho and Tânia Aires for help in the field. We also thank Raquel Vacquer-Sunyer and David Paterson for useful discussions and insights on experimental designs, as well as two anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this manuscript.
Keywords
- Allelic richness
- Biotic stress
- Genotypic richness
- Resilience
- Resistance
- Seagrass
- Zostera noltii
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- General Environmental Science