Biodiversity and Complexity Influence Seagrass Functioning: A Comparative-Experimental Approach Across the Northern Hemisphere

Coastal ecosystems are mediated by interactions between resource supply, consumer pressure, and community composition, with the balance shifting along environmental gradients. Comparative-experimental approaches, including observational and experimental networks, are a promising way forward to organizing this complexity into predictive models and to quantify the role of biodiversity on ocean processes. Through the Zostera Experimental Network we utilize this approach to study the community ecology of eelgrass (Zostera marina), the most widespread marine plant and foundation of important but threatened coastal ecosystems throughout the northern hemisphere. In 2014, parallel field surveys and experiments were conducted at 50 field sites to measure correlations between mesograzer species diversity, eelgrass genetic diversity, predation pressure, and seagrass dynamics. Biodiversity was positively correlated with plant and grazer biomass across sites. Predation pressure in these systems decreased with grazer biomass and latitude. In subsequent experiments in 2015, habitat complexity influenced the grazer community. These results suggest that the impacts of biodiversity loss on ecosystems will be of comparable magnitude to those of other global change factors and should be accounted for in relevant monitoring and restoration activities.