Predicting the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on deep-sea ecosystems requires a thorough understanding of both environmental and faunal drivers of ecosystem function. Studies of deep-sea ecosystems, however, typically consider environmental drivers only and seldom investigate the effects of seabed communities on ecosystem processes. Here, we describe spatial and temporal variation in sediment community oxygen consumption (SCOC), a measure of benthic metabolism and carbon mineralisation, across several sites on Chatham Rise, off the east coast off New Zealand's South Island, and investigate relationships between environmental factors, macrofauna community parameters, and SCOC in order to quantify their relative contributions to benthic metabolism. SCOC differed significantly among sites but not between the two sampling events in August and December 2015. SCOC was significantly and most strongly correlated with estimated particulate organic carbon flux in both August and December in marginal regressions (R² = 0.53–0.61), followed by macrofaunal abundance (0.28–0.52), macrofaunal taxon richness (0.09–0.50) and water depth (0.30–0.35). Variation partitioning analysis showed that in late winter (August), most of the variability in SCOC was accounted for by environmental variables independently of macrofauna, whereas in summer (December), most of the variability in SCOC was accounted for by the combined effects of environment and macrofauna. We also observed a greater effect of macrofauna independent of environment in summer than in late winter (R² = 0.13 and 0.05, respectively). Our findings indicate that the contribution of macrofauna to benthic metabolism can be substantial and vary temporally. In addition, our findings suggest that the shifts in ecosystem function resulting from anthropogenic stressors will be difficult to predict due to the interactive effects of environment and macrofauna on benthic metabolism. Nevertheless, if particulate organic carbon flux decreases on Chatham Rise as predicted in climate change scenarios, we anticipate that impacts on benthic metabolism will be most strongly felt in the less productive areas of the rise due to the stronger link between macrofauna and SCOC at low macrofaunal densities.

预测人为干扰对深海生态系统的影响，需要对生态系统功能的环境和动物驱动因素有透彻的了解。然而，对深海生态系统的研究通常只考虑环境驱动因素，很少研究海床群落对生态系统过程的影响。在这里，我们描述了位于Chatham Rise（位于新西兰南岛东海岸外）的多个地点的沉积物群落耗氧量（SCOC）的时空变化，这是底栖生物代谢和碳矿化的量度，并调查了环境因素之间的关系，大型动物群落参数和SCOC，以量化它们对底栖生物代谢的相对贡献。²  = 0.53–0.61），其次是大型动物的丰度（0.28–0.52），大型动物的分类群丰富度（0.09–0.50）和水深（0.30–0.35）。变异分区分析表明，在冬季（8月）中，SCOC的大部分变异是由环境变量引起的，而与大型动物无关，而在夏季（12月），SCOC的大部分变异是由环境的综合影响引起的和大型动物。我们还观察到，夏季大型动物不受环境的影响要大于冬季末（R ² 分别为0.13和0.05）。我们的发现表明，大型动物对底栖生物代谢的贡献可能很大，并且随时间变化。此外，我们的研究结果表明，由于环境和大型动物对底栖生物代谢的相互作用，人为压力源导致的生态系统功能变化将难以预测。但是，如果像气候变化情景中所预测的那样，在查塔姆河上升的颗粒有机碳通量减少，我们预计在低产区，由于大型动物与SCOC之间的联系更加紧密，对底栖生物代谢的影响将在产量较低的地区最为明显。密度。