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Sponges are the most conspicuous component of the Antarctic benthic ecosystem, a system under stress both from climate change and fishing activities. Observations over four decades are compiled and reveal extremely episodic sponge recruitment and growth. Recruitment occurred under different oceanographic conditions on both sides of McMurdo Sound. Most of the sponges appear to have recruited in the late 1990s–2000. Observations from 2000 to 2010 follow thirty years of relative stasis with very little sponge recruitment or growth followed by a general pattern of recruitment by some forty species of sponges. That there was almost no recruitment observed on natural substrata emphasizes the contrast between potential and realized recruitment. This unique data set was derived from a region noted for physical stasis, but the episodic ecological phenomena highlight the importance of rare events. Against a background of intermittent food resources and the low metabolic costs of stasis, understanding the causes of irregular larval supply, dispersal processes, recruitment success and survivorship becomes critical to predicting ecosystem dynamics and resilience in response to increasing environmental change. Our time-series emphasizes that long-term data collection is essential for meaningful forecasts about environmental change in the unique benthic ecosystems of the Antarctic shelf.

The Lau back-arc spreading center exhibits gradients in hydrothermal vent habitat characteristics from north to south. Biological zonation within a few meters of vents has been described as temperature driven. We constructed georeferenced photomosaics of the seafloor out to tens of meters beyond vents to describe peripheral zonation and explore correlations between environmental conditions and the biological community. Cluster analysis separated northern sites from southern sites, corresponding to a break in substrate from basalt in the north to andesite in the south. Northern sites were dominated by anemones, and southern by sponges. A previous suggestion that dominants may be dependent on friability of the substrate was not supported; when visually distinguishable, individual species within taxa showed different patterns. Northern sites hosted proportionally more suspension feeding species. Sulfide that can support microbial food sources is at higher concentrations at these sites, though bathymetry that may enhance bottom currents is less rugged. Northern sites had higher diversity that may result from the overall northwards flow, which would generally permit easier dispersal downcurrent, though we observed no difference in dispersal strategies at different sites.

Species density of macrofaunal invertebrates living in marine soft sediments was highest at the shelf-slope break (100‐150 m) in Monterey Bay (449 m )2 ). There were 337 species m )2 in the mid-shelf mud zone (80 m). There were fewer species along the slope: 205 m )2 from the lower slope (950-2000 m) and 335 m )2 on the upper slope (250-750 m). Species density was highest inside the bay (328-446 m )2 ) compared to outside (336-339 m )2 ), when examining samples at selected water depths (60-1000 m). There was little difference in local species density from 1 km of shoreline compared to regional species density along 1000 km of shoreline at both shelf and slope depths. The highest species densities worldwide in the literature are recorded along the Carolina slope in the Atlantic Ocean, where peak species density (436/0.81 m 2 ) at 800 m and values at the largest sample areas are similar to those on the Monterey Bay shelf. We speculate that the highest species densities occur where ocean water exchanges energy with shoaling topography at the continental margin, bringing more food to the benthos ‐ areas such as the very productive waters in the upwelling system of Monterey Bay.

One of the largest contiguous seagrass ecosystems in the world is located on the shallow continental shelf adjacent to the west coast of Florida, USA and is comprised of seasonally ephemeral Halophila decipiens meadows. Little is known about the demography of the west Florida shelf H. decipiens , which may produce 4.56 × 10 8 g C day −1 or more during the peak growing season. We documented seagrass distribution, biomass, and productivity, and density of sediment seed reserves, seedlings, flowers and fruits on the southeastern portion of the west Florida shelf by sampling along a transect at three stations in 10, 15, and 20 m water depth. Biomass, flower, fruit, seedling, and seed bank densities tended to be highest at stations in 10–15 m water depth and lowest at 20 m. Flowers and fruit were most prevalent during summer cruises (June and August 1999, July 2000). Seedling germination occurred during summer, fall (October 1999), and winter (January 2000) sampling events, with the highest seedling densities present during the winter. Seed bank density remained consistent through time. A Category I hurricane with sustained winds of 120 km h −1 passed over the stations, but only limited impact on H. decipiens biomass was observed. The presence of a persistent seed bank provides for recovery after storm disturbance, annual reestablishment of populations, and continual maintenance of the 20,000 km 2 of deep water seagrass habitat present on the west Florida shelf.

Thalassia testudinum seedling recruitment, survival, and growth were examined within physically disturbed seagrass beds in the Florida Keys. Two separate studies were conducted. In the first, a large-scale study, T. testudinum seedlings were surveyed and collected from a large seagrass disturbance (1560 m 2 ), 4.8 yr after the initial impact from a motor-vessel grounding. In the second, a smaller-scale study, T. testudinum seedling recruitment was examined over a 2 yr period within 9 smaller motor-vessel disturbances located within intact T. testudinum beds. In the large-scale study, we reconstructed the age of the seedlings based on shoot production rates from a previous study and from the small-scale study. A total of 79 seedlings were collected that varied in age from young of the year to 4.8 yr old; 6 different seedling cohorts were identified. The average density and rhizome- elongation rate for 1 yr old seedlings were 1 m -2 and 6.6 cm yr -1 , respectively. In the small-scale study, we surveyed and permanently marked all newly recruited seedlings; monitoring was conducted 5 more times over a 2 yr period. The average seedling survival after Year 1 was 42%; after Year 2, average survival dropped to 20%. The average seedling density after Year 1 was 0.071 m -2 ; after Year 2, average density dropped to 0.026 m -2 . The average rhizome-elongation rate and shoot- production rate of 1 yr old seedlings were 6 cm yr -1 and 1.8 shoots yr -1 , respectively. The results of this study suggest that T. testudinum seedlings are a regular and reliable source of new recruits on seagrass banks in the Florida Keys.

Few studies have addressed the spatial and temporal variability in seagrass seed banks. For small-seeded species in particular, seed banks are hard to sample quantitatively because of the difficulty in separating small seeds from sediment. Halophila decipiens is a highly fecund and cosmopolitan seagrass species, occupying niches which other larger-sized perennial species cannot utilize. Although many studies have suggested H. decipiens meadows are annual and depend on seed banks to re-establish, none have quantitatively examined this necessary life history component. To process the number of samples required to adequately address questions of spatial and temporal variability in H. decipiens seed banks, we developed a density separation technique which removes seeds from sediment and allows easier enumeration. Sediment samples were treated with refrigerated Ludox, a colloidal silica. The colloidal silica supernatant and two surface sediment rinses were examined for the presence of seeds. Our protocol removed between 78 and 100% of seeds from sediment, with a mean removal efficiency of 89%. Use of this method increased our sample processing capability from 4 to 20 samples per day.

International audience; The description of major patterns in beta (β) diversity is important in order to understand changes in community composition and/or richness at different spatial and temporal scales, and can interrogate processes driving species distribution and community dynamics. Human impacts have pushed many estuarine systems far from their historical baseline of rich, diverse, and productive ecosystems. Despite the ecological and social importance of estuaries, there has not yet been an attempt to investigate patterns of β-diversity and its partitioning along estuarine systems of different continents. We aimed to evaluate if benthic assemblages would show higher turnover than nestedness in tropical than in temperate systems, if well-known impacted estuaries would show greater nestedness than less polluted systems, and to propose a conceptual framework for studying benthic macrofauna beta diversity along estuaries. We analyzed subtidal benthic macrofaunal data from estuaries in Brazil, USA and France. We estimated alpha (α), beta (β) and gamma (γ) diversity for each sampling time in each system, investigated patterns of β -diversity as multivariate dispersion and the partitioning (nestedness and replacement) of β-diversity along each estuary. There was a decrease in the α-diversity along marine to freshwater conditions at most of the estuaries and sampling dates. Beta diversity as multivariate dispersion showed high variability. Most of the estuaries showed a greater proportion of the β-diversity driven by replacement than nestedness. We suggest a conceptual framework for estuaries where relatively pristine estuaries would have their β-diversity mostly driven by replacement while impacted estuaries subjected to several anthropogenic stressors would show total nestedness or total replacement, depending on the stress.

Wounding of both terrestrial and marine plants is known to induce chemical responses in the plants; the induced compounds may defend against herbivory or act in wound-healing processes. We demonstrate here, for the first time, induction of phlorotannins in kelps (Phaeophyta, Laminariales). an important and widespread group of marine benthic algae. The rapid response of kelps to mechanical wounding contrasts with previously published work on other marine algae, where response has been slower. In 4 of the 5 species tested, induction (increases of approximately 30 to 9036 of original levels) occurred very rapidly, within 1 to 3 d of wounding, although the magnitude and duration of the induction varied among species and tissue types. Many induced responses persisted for 5 to 7 d and then relaxed. Relaxation times are a critical component in the hypothesized cost-effectiveness of induced versus constitutive defenses, and this is one of the first attempts to measure relaxation times of chemlcal defenses in marine algae. The temporal persistence of the response suggests an antiherb~vory rather than a wound-healing function for induction of phlorotannins, although this needs further testing KEY MiORDS Kelp phlorotannins . Induction Relaxat~on Chemlcal defense . Wound heal~ng Herb~vory