Six decades of change in pollution and benthic invertebrate biodiversity in a southern New England estuary
Introduction
Biodiversity supports the functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide to people (Worm et al., 2006; Palumbi et al., 2009; Fautin et al., 2010; Solan et al., 2012; Goulletquer et al., 2014; Dornelas et al., in press). Ecosystem functions and services driven by benthic biodiversity include seafood for human consumption, water filtration (water quality), bioturbation and bio-irrigation (supporting nutrient cycling), shoreline protection, habitat for other species, and cultural services such as recreation (Snelgrove et al., 1997; Snelgrove, 1998, Snelgrove, 1999; Levin et al., 2001; Weslawski et al., 2004; Goulletquer et al., 2014).
Marine ecosystems around the world have experienced rapid declines in biodiversity as a result of multiple stressors (Snelgrove et al., 2004; Jackson, 2008; Worm et al., 2006; Fautin et al., 2010; McCauley et al., 2015) and quantifying these changes has been recognized as a crucial research need (Fautin et al., 2010; Dornelas et al., in press). Estuarine functions are affected when benthic species losses lead to less food available for fishes, fewer large bioturbators, fewer suspension feeders, loss of reef or mat habitat, or collapse of biological interactions (Goulletquer et al., 2014). Loss of rare species reduces ecosystem functioning, productivity, and the ability to respond to environmental perturbations (Micheli and Halpern, 2005; Mouillat et al., 2013; Obst et al., 2017). Long-term benthic community studies have contributed to an understanding of how the sum of multiple anthropogenic factors over long periods of time has adversely affected biodiversity. Factors implicated include eutrophication and hypoxia (Kemp et al., 2005; Pranovi et al., 2008; Reise et al., 2008; Krann et al., 2011), warming waters (Callaway et al., 2007; Shojaei et al., 2016), commercial fishing (Callaway et al., 2007; Trott, 2016), contaminants and combinations of these (Obst et al., 2017). Benthic communities are good integrators of these cumulative stressors (Obst et al., 2017).
This article describes how species biodiversity and community composition of the soft-bottom benthic invertebrate macrofaunal community of Narragansett Bay has changed over the past six decades and relates changes, where possible, to anthropogenic drivers. Sampling methods that allowed such quantitative comparisons of benthic invertebrates in the bay began in the 1950s. Recently, in an effort to reduce eutrophication and hypoxia, nutrient loads to the bay have been reduced, including a 50% reduction of total nitrogen input from wastewater treatment facilities (WWTF) that occurred 2005–2013 (NBEP, 2017). Additionally, inputs of metals, petroleum hydrocarbons, and synthetic organic contaminants have declined in recent years while other stressors (e.g., water temperature, watershed development) are increasing (NBEP, 2017). Questions arise as to what the effect will be on the estuarine ecosystem. This article explores whether it is possible to detect a benthic response to these changes.
Section snippets
Study area
Narragansett Bay is a temperate northeastern U.S. estuary in Rhode Island and Massachusetts located at the northern end of the Virginian Biogeographic Province (Fig. 1). Benthic invertebrate biodiversity in the bay stems from a mix of warm temperate species of the Virginian Province and Arctic-boreal species more common in the Acadian Biogeographic Province to the north (Hale, 2010), continental shelf species that extend up into the deep East Passage (Pratt, 1992), and rocky shore habitats at
Biodiversity status and trends for Narragansett Bay
The USEPA dataset spanning 25 years and 166 stations included 561 taxa. Five species dominated numerical abundance (Table 1, Fig. 2). Like other soft-bottom benthic studies (Gray and Elliott, 2009; Trott, 2016), most of the taxa in the USEPA study were rare, as shown by the long tail to the right in the species dominance plot (Fig. 2). Rare species (<20 occurrences in the 25-year dataset) comprised 88% of all taxa. Some of the species are rare because they were not efficiently captured by the
Current status of Narragansett Bay benthic communities
The mid-bay area has been characterized as a Nephtys-Nucula community (Pratt, 1992). In the USEPA 25-yr dataset for the entire bay, the bivalve Nucula proxima was in the top five for both prevalence and abundance but the polychaete Nephtys incisa was so only for prevalence. The polychaete Mediomastus ambiseta was more prevalent and abundant than both. Nucula spp. and M. ambiseta were the species contributing the most to community similarity in the entire bay in the 1990s and the 2000s. Thus,
Conclusions
For the entire bay (USEPA dataset) and for the North Jamestown site, ∆* showed a rising trend toward the end of each time series. Although not statistically significant, these trends may be indicative of a recovery of biodiversity in response to decreased anthropogenic stressors, as suggested by an analysis of historical data collected over 182 years (Hale et al., 2018a). Whether these trends will continue and become significant will require further years of monitoring. It was too early to
Acknowledgments
We thank Sheldon Pratt of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island (URI GSO) for many sources of data and discussions of the Narragansett Bay benthos. We are grateful to Deborah French McCay and Melanie Schroeder of Applied Science Associates, Inc., for providing the Mount Hope Bay data from MRI and the Weaver Cove LNG project. Also thanks to Candace Oviatt (URI GSO) for the MERL data, to Jeremy Collie (URI GSO) for the invertebrate data from the GSO trawl time
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