A new marine species database developed by Niwa provides information for more than 700 seafloor invertebrates
MUDFLAT waders of all ages will benefit from a new marine species database developed by Niwa.
The New Zealand Trait Database – the first of its kind in NZ – provides information for more than 700 shallow-water seafloor invertebrates, such as snails, crabs, and worms.
As well as identifying marine creepy crawlies, the database includes information on everything from feeding method and body shape, to the ways the animals move and mix the sediment they live in.
As well as being a boon for budding marine biologists, the database will be a powerful tool for understanding and protecting our native ecosystems, Dr Drew Lohrer, Niwa strategy manager for coasts and estuaries, said.
“This database brings together information provided by many New Zealand and overseas researchers. It fills a big knowledge gap and provides a standard set of information – in one accessible online location – for us all to work with.
“The biological and functional traits information in the database opens doors to new types of analyses, which in turn will help us to protect species and their ecosystems,” Drew said.
In recent decades, the use of trait-based analyses has advanced scientists’ understanding of marine ecosystem functioning, including how it will respond to environmental change.
“The NZTD enables us to describe the types of traits and functions that are likely to disappear if we lose species to pollution or disturbance.
“We can also gain insights into the resilience of animals living on the seafloor by examining how their traits overlap.
“For example, if one species is lost, ecosystem functioning may be maintained through the activities and traits of those remaining. However, if dozens of species are lost, we may lose critical functions entirely, which would have a bigger impact on the whole system.”
Gathering this information together was no easy feat, said Niwa marine ecologist Orlando Lam-Gordillo, who led the task.
“Compiling the database was a substantial effort because we needed to describe around 18 traits with 77 sub-categories for each of the 700 animal types.
“We did this by scouring hundreds of pieces of scientific literature and biological collections, which as you can imagine is difficult and time-consuming. Because of this, these databases are scarce or lacking in many parts of the world, which until now, included New Zealand,” Orlando said.
The New Zealand Trait Database is an ongoing project, with continuous updates and refinements as additional taxa and trait information becomes available. It can be freely viewed and downloaded from the repository Figshare and the Niwa website.
Traits are defined as the components of organisms that can be measured and have an effect on ecosystem health.
Examples of traits include the behaviour, life history, morphology, and physiological characteristics that species may exhibit and that influence ecosystems, such as bioturbation, body size, feeding mode, living habit, and sediment position.
The use of traits has been proposed as a powerful tool for assessing biodiversity, since trait diversity and variability are related to changes in functions across ecosystems.
Macrobenthic organisms are threatened by anthropogenic pressures such as climate change, habitat disturbance, and eutrophication (dead zone regions), which are modifying the structure and distributions of their communities.
Changes in macrobenthic communities and losses of biodiversity affect the functioning of ecosystems. Trait-based approaches have been proposed to understand the potential effects of biodiversity loss on the functioning of ecosystems, providing integrative knowledge of the links between biodiversity, functional traits, and ecosystems
