Climate-driven trans-Tasman population increase of the habitat-modifying, range extending sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii.

Global climate change is shifting thermal gradients in the world's oceans, resulting in the redistribution of species and thermophilisation of reefs. In the Southwest Pacific, warming has underpinned the range extension and population increase of the habitat-modifying sea urchin, Centrostephanus rodgersii. Eastern Tasmania and Northeastern Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) lie at the forefront of these changes, with increases in C.

Assessing drivers of variation in the distribution of macroalgal forests across a complex marine environment in Central New Zealand.

Understanding the relative importance of different stressors in driving habitat loss is key to developing management strategies. Long-term declines in macroalgal forests on rocky reefs in central New Zealand have been suggested to be due to several anthropogenic stressors including sea urchin grazing resulting from overfishing of predators, elevated turbidity associated with land-based sediment inputs and warming waters. To better understand key drivers influencing macroalgal forests, we examined how the distribution of macroalgal forests varies across large environmental gradients on rocky reefs in Tōtaranui-Queen Charlotte Sound and Kura Te Au-Tory Channel, central New Zealand.

Kelp forests as nursery and foundational habitat for reef fishes.

Conservation of marine biodiversity requires an understanding of the habitats needed to support and replenish species of interest. It also requires knowledge about the abundance and diversity of multispecies assemblages. Variation in the distribution and composition of kelp forests, one of the most productive marine coastal habitats globally, can have major influences on reef fishes-a group of ecologically and socioeconomically important species.

Long-term marine protection enhances kelp forest ecosystem stability.

Trophic downgrading destabilizes ecosystems and can drive large-scale shifts in ecosystem state. While restoring predatory interactions in marine reserves can reverse anthropogenic-driven shifts, empirical evidence of increased ecosystem stability and persistence in the presence of predators is scant. We compared temporal variation in rocky reef ecosystem state in New Zealand's oldest marine reserve to nearby fished reefs to examine whether protection of predators led to more persistent and stable reef ecosystem states in the marine reserve.

Multi-indicator 'state space' approach to assessing changes in shallow urban reef ecosystem health.

Tracking changes in ecosystem health is an important objective for environmental managers, but is often limited by an understanding of what constitutes a "healthy" system and how to aggregate a range of health indicators into a single meaningful metric. We used a multi-indicator 'state space' approach to quantify changes over 13 years in reef ecosystem health in an urban area that has undergone intense housing development. Based on nine health indicators (macroalgal canopy length and biomass, macroalgal canopy and habitat functional diversity, mobile and predatory invertebrate density and size, total species and non-indigenous species richness), we found that the overall health of the reef community declined at five of the ten study sites.

Coastal darkening substantially limits the contribution of kelp to coastal carbon cycles.

Macroalgal-dominated habitats are rapidly gaining recognition as important contributors to marine carbon cycles and sequestration. Despite this recognition, relatively little is known about the production and fate of carbon originating from these highly productive ecosystems, or how anthropogenic- and climate-related stressors affect the role of macroalgae in marine carbon cycles. Here, we examine the impact of increasing turbidity on carbon storage, fixation and loss in southern hemisphere kelp forests.

Grazer behaviour can regulate large-scale patterning of community states.

Ecosystem patterning can arise from environmental heterogeneity, biological feedbacks that produce multiple persistent ecological states, or their interaction. One source of feedbacks is density-dependent changes in behaviour that regulate species interactions. By fitting state-space models to large-scale (~500 km) surveys on temperate rocky reefs, we find that behavioural feedbacks best explain why kelp and urchin barrens form either reef-wide patches or local mosaics.

Seasonal and spatial variation in photosynthetic response of the kelp Ecklonia radiata across a turbidity gradient.

Understanding the photoacclimation response of macroalgae across broad spatial and temporal scales is necessary for predicting their vulnerability to environmental changes and quantifying their contribution to coastal primary production. This study investigated how the photosynthesis-irradiance response and photosynthetic pigment content of the kelp Ecklonia radiata varies both spatially and seasonally among seven sites located across a turbidity gradient in the Hauraki Gulf, north-eastern New Zealand. Photosynthesis-irradiance curves were derived under laboratory conditions for whole adult E.

Half a century of coastal temperature records reveal complex warming trends in western boundary currents.

Accelerated warming of western boundary currents due to the strengthening of subtropical gyres has had cascading effects on coastal ecosystems and is widely expected to result in further tropicalization of temperate regions. Predicting how species and ecosystems will respond requires a better understanding of the variability in ocean warming in complex boundary current regions. Using three ≥50 year temperature records we demonstrate high variability in the magnitude and seasonality of warming in the Southwest Pacific boundary current region.

Predators indirectly induce stronger prey through a trophic cascade.

Many prey species induce defences in direct response to predation cues. However, prey defences could also be enhanced by predators indirectly via mechanisms that increase resource availability to prey, e.g.

Predation cues rather than resource availability promote cryptic behaviour in a habitat-forming sea urchin.

It is well known that predators often influence the foraging behaviour of prey through the so-called "fear effect". However, it is also possible that predators could change prey behaviour indirectly by altering the prey's food supply through a trophic cascade. The predator-sea urchin-kelp trophic cascade is widely assumed to be driven by the removal of sea urchins by predators, but changes in sea urchin behaviour in response to predators or increased food availability could also play an important role.

Warmer temperatures reduce the influence of an important keystone predator.

Predator-prey interactions may be strongly influenced by temperature variations in marine ecosystems. Consequently, climate change may alter the importance of predators with repercussions for ecosystem functioning and structure. In North-eastern Pacific kelp forests, the starfish Pycnopodia helianthoides is known to be an important predator of the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.

Global patterns of kelp forest change over the past half-century.

Kelp forests (Order Laminariales) form key biogenic habitats in coastal regions of temperate and Arctic seas worldwide, providing ecosystem services valued in the range of billions of dollars annually. Although local evidence suggests that kelp forests are increasingly threatened by a variety of stressors, no comprehensive global analysis of change in kelp abundances currently exists. Here, we build and analyze a global database of kelp time series spanning the past half-century to assess regional and global trends in kelp abundances.

Canopy interactions and physical stress gradients in subtidal communities.

Species interactions are integral drivers of community structure and can change from competitive to facilitative with increasing environmental stress. In subtidal marine ecosystems, however, interactions along physical stress gradients have seldom been tested. We observed seaweed canopy interactions across depth and latitudinal gradients to test whether light and temperature stress structured interaction patterns.

Global conservation outcomes depend on marine protected areas with five key features.

In line with global targets agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) is increasing rapidly, yet socio-economic benefits generated by MPAs remain difficult to predict and under debate. MPAs often fail to reach their full potential as a consequence of factors such as illegal harvesting, regulations that legally allow detrimental harvesting, or emigration of animals outside boundaries because of continuous habitat or inadequate size of reserve. Here we show that the conservation benefits of 87 MPAs investigated worldwide increase exponentially with the accumulation of five key features: no take, well enforced, old (>10 years), large (>100 km(2)), and isolated by deep water or sand.

Toxic cascades: multiple anthropogenic stressors have complex and unanticipated interactive effects on temperate reefs.

In a changing environment multiple anthropogenic stressors can have novel and non-additive effects on interacting species. We investigated the interactive effects of fishing and harmful algal blooms on the predator-sea urchin-macroalgae trophic cascade. Fishing of urchin predators had indirect negative effects on macroalgae, whereas blooms of epi-benthic dinoflagellates (Ostreopsis siamensis) were found to have strong negative effects on urchins and indirect positive effects on macroalgae.

Key features and context-dependence of fishery-induced trophic cascades.

Trophic cascades triggered by fishing have profound implications for marine ecosystems and the socioeconomic systems that depend on them. With the number of reported cases quickly growing, key features and commonalities have emerged. Fishery-induced trophic cascades often display differential response times and nonlinear trajectories among trophic levels and can be accompanied by shifts in alternative states.

Cascading effects of fishing can alter carbon flow through a temperate coastal ecosystem.

Mounting evidence suggests that fishing can trigger trophic cascades and alter food web dynamics, yet its effects on ecosystem function remain largely unknown. We used the large-scale experimental framework of four marine reserves, spanning an oceanographic gradient in northeastern New Zealand, to test the extent to which the exploitation of reef predators can alter kelp carbon flux and secondary production. We provide evidence that the reduction of predatory snapper (Pagrus auratus) and lobster (Jasus edwardsii) can lead to an increase in sea urchins (Evechinus chloroticus) and indirect declines in kelp biomass in some locations but not others.

Context-dependent effects of fishing: variation in trophic cascades across environmental gradients.

Marine reserves provide a large-scale experimental framework to investigate the effects of fishing on food web dynamics and how they vary with environmental context. Because marine reserves promote the recovery of previously fished predators, spatial comparisons between reserve and fished sites are often made to infer such effects; however, alternative explanations for differences between reserve and fished sites are seldom tested (e.g.

Evaluation of biogeographic classification schemes for conservation planning: application to New Zealand's coastal marine environment.

For many regions worldwide, multiple and often contrasting biogeographic classifications exist that are derived from a variety of taxa and techniques. This presents a challenge for managers who must choose appropriate large-scale spatial frameworks for systematic conservation planning. We demonstrate how systematically collected community data can be used to evaluate existing biogeographic classifications, identify the most appropriate metric for biogeographic patterns seen in other taxonomic groups, and develop an independent biogeographic classification scheme for systematic conservation planning.

Marine reserves demonstrate top-down control of community structure on temperate reefs.

Replicated ecological studies in marine reserves and associated unprotected areas are valuable in examining top-down impacts on communities and the ecosystem-level effects of fishing. We carried out experimental studies in two temperate marine reserves to examine these top-down influences on shallow subtidal reef communities in northeastern New Zealand. Both reserves examined are known to support high densities of predators and tethering experiments showed that the chance of predation on the dominant sea urchin, Evechinus chloroticus, within both reserves was approximately 7 times higher relative to outside.