Detect coastal disturbances and climate change effects in coralligenous community through sentinel stations

RESEARCH ARTICLE Detect coastal disturbances and climate change effects in coralligenous community through sentinel stations Jose´ C. Garcı´a-Go´ mez*☯, Alexandre R. Gonza´lez☯, Manuel J. MaestreID☯, Free Espinosa☯ Laboratorio de Biologı´a Marina de la Universidad de Sevilla (LBMUS)/A´ rea de Investigacio´ n I+D+i del Acuario de Sevilla/Estacio´ n de Biologı´a Marina del Estrecho (Ceuta), Seville, Spain ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * jcgarcia@us.es Abstract This study was implemented to assess the Sessile Bioindicators in Permanent Quadrats (SBPQ) underwater environmental alert method. The SBPQ is a non-invasive and low-cost protocol; it uses sessile target species (indicators) to detect environmental alterations (natu- ral or anthropic) at either the local or global (i.e., climate change) scale and the intrusion of invasive species. The SBPQ focuses on the monitoring of preselected sessile and sensitive benthic species associated with rocky coralligenous habitats using permanent quadrats in underwater sentinel stations. The selected target species have been well documented as bioindicators that disappear in the absence of environmental stability. However, whether these species are good indicators of stability or, in contrast, suffer variations in long-term coverage has not been verified. The purpose of this study was to assess the part of the method based on the hypothesis that, over a long temporal series in a highly structured and biodiverse coralligenous assemblage, the cover of sensitive sessile species does not

change over time if the environmental stability characterising the habitat is not altered. Over a ten-year period (2005–2014), the sublittoral sessile biota in the Straits of Gibraltar Natural Park on the southern Iberian Peninsula was monitored at a 28 m-deep underwater sentinel stations. Analyses of the coverages of target indicator species (i.e., Paramuricea clavata and Astroides calycularis) together with other accompanying sessile organisms based on the periodic superimposition of gridded images from horizontal and vertical rocky surfaces allowed us to assess the effectiveness of the method. We conclude that no alterations occurred during the study period; only minimal fluctuations in cover were detected, and the method is reliable for detecting biological changes in ecosystems found in other geographi- cal areas containing the chosen indicator species at similar dominance levels. Introduction The long-term evaluation and quantification of changes in species are crucial for our knowl- edge of various marine ecosystems [1, 2] and constitute useful tools for the environmental PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231641 May 5, 2020 1 / 23 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Garcı´a-Go´mez JC, Gonza´lez AR, Maestre MJ, Espinosa F (2020) Detect coastal disturbances and climate change effects in coralligenous community through sentinel stations. PLoS ONE 15(5): e0231641. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0231641 Editor: Carlo Nike Bianchi, Universita degli Studi di Genova, ITALY

Received: September 16, 2019 Accepted: March 27, 2020 Published: May 5, 2020 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231641 Copyright: © 2020 Garcı´a-Go´mez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.