The MacKinnon Lists Technique: An efficient new method for rapidly assessing biodiversity and species abundance ranks in the marine environment

Shallow Fished, three species for Deep ROA and two species for Shallow ROA (Table 1 and supplementary materials). Even with only four habitat comparisons available this difference in the final rate at which species richness estimates were changing was very close to significant between the two methods (Paired t-test: t = 3.0, df = 3, p = 0.058), providing evidence of an underlying difference in efficiency of methods. For the MLT Chao 2 species richness estimates the range of the 95% confidence intervals was also somewhat smaller than for MaxN for three out of the four habitats (95% CI Range: Deep Fished MLT 76.7 v MaxN 88.8, Shallow Fished MLT 58.4 v MaxN 62.1, Deep ROA MLT 23.2 v MaxN 54.3, Shallow Fished MLT 47.2 v MaxN 26.8). Fisher’s alpha (all sample index), Brillouin Diversity, Brillouin Evenness and PilousJ even- ness were calculated for each habitat (Table 3). Based on the widely overlapping standard errors the values for both methods are very similar with both methods identifying the same pattern, with Deep Fished and Shallow Fished habitats characterised by greater species diver- sity, but similar evenness compared to those in the ROA. Abundant species and target species We compared the ten most abundant species (numerically) for MLT and MaxN (Table 4). Both methods identified very similar lists of the most abundant ten species. For each habitat, the methods agreed on 9 out of 10 of the most abundant species and for Shallow ROA

Table 1. Samples generated by MaxN and MLT per habitat and stability of species richness (SR) estimates. As described in the methods, based on the master list, par- tial list samples at the end of videos were added to form additional pooled list samples for a habitat. Total number of additional lists generated is given in brackets. Number of video samples generated MaxN Final SR Estimate Chao 2 MaxN Penultimate SR Estimate MaxN Final Rate of SR Change Deep Fished 14 97.00 93.18 3.82 Shallow Fished 10 83.30 81.52 1.78 Deep ROA 5 51.54 48.72 2.82 ShallowROA 5 54.42 52.76 1.66 Number of list samples generated (pooled lists in brackets) MLT Final SR Estimate Chao 2 MLT Penultimate SR Estimate MLT Final Rate of SR Change Deep Fished 53 (6) 90.70 91.13 0.43 Shallow Fished 54 (4) 81.90 82.44 0.54 Deep ROA 14 (1) 39.04 39.21 0.17 ShallowROA 27 (2) 61.37 60.23 1.14 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231820.t001 Table 2. Species richness estimates for each habitat. Based on species estimators (S(exp), ACE, ICE, Chao1, Chao2, Jack1, Jack2 and MMruns). Habitat Deep fished Shallow fished Deep ROA Shallow ROA Index MaxN MLT MaxN MLT MaxN MLT MaxN MLT S(exp) 58.00 58.00 58.00 59.00 32.00 32.00 45.00 45.00 ACE 79.00 82.16 74.4 81.21 50.27 45.15 51.84 59.36 ICE 105.35 92.45 83.56 79.08 66.68 49.38 62.35 61.6 Chao 1 79.34 84.19 74.97 77.97 43.30 37.04 78.92 59.96 Chao 2 97.00 90.70 83.30 81.90 51.54 39.04 54.42 61.37 Jack 1 84.00 82.53 78.70 79.61 47.20 45.00 59.40 61.37

Jack 2 101.67 99.03 91.41 92.27 55.90 48.30 64.80 70.88 MMruns 83.49 69.59 74.28 71.87 69.10 55.45 83.66 64.74 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231820.t002 PLOS ONE A new method for monitoring marine biodiversity PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231820 April 22, 2020 6 / 15