Biological Traits Analysis of Subtropic Macrobenthic Communities upon Organic Enrichment

One of the on-going debates in ecology centres on ecosystem structure and function. It has been shown that even though large numbers of rare species are removed, many ecosystems still apparently function normally. In marine seabed communities, there are many species whose functional roles are not known, so whether their presence or absence would affect the community function is debatable. One approach is, instead of using species to analyze patterns of assemblage distribution, to use biological traits of these species, for the analysis of the response of a community to environmental conditions. However, most such attempts have been on freshwater ecosystems and there are very few studies using this approach in the marine benthic ecosystems, especially in tropical/subtropical waters. This research will focus on the responses of structure and functioning in soft-sediment communities, in subtropical Hong Kong, especially to an important environmental stressor, i.e., organic enrichment, using a combined approach of community structure and biological traits analyses. By analyzing the biological traits with community structure, the researchers can better identify the mechanism behind the effects of such impacts and contribute to the future assessment of ecological consequences. The objectives of the study are to:Investigate how organic enrichment impacts the structure and functioning of marine benthic communities in subtropical waters,Identify which biological traits will be reduced and which will dominate in heavy organically enriched situations, andElucidate how these impacts influence the change of proportions of rare species, and analyze any species that are rare but yet significant to the functioning of the community.