An international team of experts has developed a framework to identify the most vulnerable marine species . And it is that human activities are exerting more than considerable pressure on marine ecosystems. The goal of this research project is to drive global conservation and political efforts against human-induced climate change.
The researchers categorized a wide range of threats faced by more than 45,000 species (such as the manatee, the white dolphin, the green turtle or the blue whale). While generating this list of hazards , they considered five groups of traits that substantially influence the susceptibility of marine species to anthropogenic stressors, including movement, reproduction, specialization, spatial scale metrics, and biophysical traits.
From all this analysis, “molluscs, corals and echinoderms, tough or spiny creatures like sea urchins, are really feeling the impacts in our oceans and facing a wide range of threats,” says Nathalie Butt of the Center for Biodiversity . and Conservation Science at the University of Queensland (Australia) and lead author of the study published in the journal Ecosphere . “They are affected by fishing and bycatch, pollution and climate change.”
We are responsible
Fishing and bycatch, pollution and climate change have an impact on these ecosystems and their inhabitants.
And it’s not just corals or these types of sea creatures, “we also found that starfish, sea snails and flying fish are increasingly vulnerable to stressors related to climate change, all of which can be found in the oceans of the whole world”, continues the expert.
Thanks to this study, scientists say, decisions can be made, with more information, about how to allocate and prioritize resources to protect the most vulnerable species in the world.
“What’s exciting is that we built the framework so that we could accommodate new information, whether it’s about new species or information about threatening processes, so this work can also be applied in particular places to protect the ocean, using more detailed information about the species. ” and its threats in that place ”, the researchers conclude in their recently published study.
Endangered marine species:
- irrawadi river dolphin
- vaquita porpoise
- japanese eel
- Hector’s Dolphin
- long-headed eagle ray
- ray shark
- umbrella octopus
- common sea cucumber
- Napoleon fish
- bighead bream
- sunfish
- horned glider
- mute shark
- european eel
- striped seahorse
- spiny seahorse
- japanese sea cucumber
- poisonous cone snail
- narrow sawfish
Referencia: Nathalie Butt, Benjamin S. Halpern, Casey C. O’Hara, A. Louise Allcock, Beth Polidoro, Samantha Sherman, Maria Byrne, Charles Birkeland, Ross G. Dwyer, Melanie Frazier, Bradley K. Woodworth, Claudia P. Arango, Michael J. Kingsford, Vinay Udyawer, Pat Hutchings, Elliot Scanes, Emily Jane McClaren, Sara M. Maxwell, Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, Emma Dugan, Blake Alexander Simmons, Amelia S. Wenger, Christi Linardich, Carissa J. Klein. A trait-based framework for assessing the vulnerability of marine species to human impacts ECOSPHERE First published: 06 February 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3919
