Testing energy biodiversity theories on marine fishes
Date
2022
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Energy-based biodiversity hypotheses suggest that lower annual variation, higher cumulative, and higher minimum energy flux into an ecosystem should each support higher biodiversity. Satellite derived energy indices support these general hypotheses for terrestrial taxa. However, these hypotheses have not been broadly tested in marine systems. Here, we calculate five different marine versions of these energy indices with satellite data. These are photosynthetically available radiation, sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a, primary production, and benthic flux of particulate organic carbon. We paired these five different marine proxies for energy indices to global fish species richness data in order to be the first study to test the three energy biodiversity hypotheses in the marine environment. Results indicated that for marine fishes, energy indices based on photosynthetically active radiation, sea surface temperature, primary production, and benthic flux of particulate organic carbon are broadly consistent with the three energy hypotheses. Our findings show that these biodiversity theories may be applicable in marine systems and indicate that fundamental underlying drivers of biodiversity on Earth are not limited by the marked differences between terrestrial and marine environments.
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Keywords
Biodiversity, Biogeography