Tim O’Hara, Daniel Gledhill, Alan Butler, Nic Bax, Robin Wilson, Gary Poore, Anna McCallum, Peter Last, Phillip England and Nikos
Andreakis (2011) Report to the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) program, administered through the Australian Government’s Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.
Overview
It is common for us as scientists and managers to slip into thinking of communities, and biodiversity in general, as existing in a static state of equilibrium with fixed spatial and temporal attributes. Reality is quite different, with the biota (genes, species and communities) developing and changing continually in a dynamic competition for survival. Any record or data point is no more than a snapshot of this continuum. We’re only now coming to recognise the importance of identifying, and even protecting, these evolutionary processes in the marine environment and the key areas where they occur, with the goal of maintaining the capacity of the ‘system’ to adapt to further change. This recognition is based on an increasingly robust marine taxonomy.
The CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub has increased our understanding of Australia’s marine biota, one of the most diverse and complex of any region. We’ve improved and developed new continental-scale baseline datasets, and provided new analyses to support marine bioregional plans around Australia. We’ve shown that Australia’s marine species-richness has been underestimated, especially for invertebrates. Where we can identify species, many are endemic – 27% of marine worms or polychaetes collected off Western Australian were endemic – but for some groups we do not have the taxonomic knowledge to identify to this level; only a few dozen of the over 600 species of microcrustaceans from the same area could be identified to species, so the uniqueness of this Australian fauna could not be determined. These are not isolated
examples, but reflect the current state of our knowledge, especially in deeper waters.
New techniques including genetic barcoding, molecular clocks (fossil calibrated timing of evolutionary divergence) and phylogeography, were used to provide novel insights into relationships, evolutionary history and geographic distribution. We have started to identify the areas of neo-endemism and paleo-endemism – the former are important as they represent marine areas in Australia where new species have originated; the latter because they are refuges where diverse species have survived previous extreme events, including climate change.
In a changing world, and one that is increasingly influenced by anthropogenic pressures, it is important that we recognise, describe, monitor, and predict variability, from genes to species to communities, and that we understand the processes that have shaped them. Multidisciplinary research like that supported by the CERF Marine Biodiversity Hub provides the breadth of biodiversity properties that we can use to
recognise change. Much of this research relies on exciting collaborations between traditional and newly-developed techniques as currently employed within the Hub. It is only with such an interpolated picture of historical change that we can understand the past, and those processes that have shaped present-day communities. Recognising where and how biodiversity is changing most rapidly is the first step in anticipating, adapting and perhaps even influencing the trajectory of change.
