Abstract

Although colonization of artificial structures by epibenthic communities is well-documented overall, our understanding of colonization processes is largely limited to low-energy environments. In this study, we monitored epibenthic colonization of different structures associated with a tidal energy test site located in a high-energy hydrodynamic environment. Using four years of image-based underwater surveys, we characterized changes through space and time in the taxonomic composition of epibenthic assemblages colonizing two kinds of artificial structures, as well as the surrounding natural habitat. Our results highlight that ecological successions followed similar trends across the two artificial habitats, but that different habitat-specific communities emerged at the end of our survey. Deployment of these artificial structures resulted in the addition of elevated and stable substrata in an environment where natural hard substrates are unstable and strongly exposed to sediment abrasion. Although epibenthic communities colonizing artificial habitats are unlikely to have reached a mature stage at the end of our survey, these supported structurally complex taxa facilitating an overall increase in local diversity. We were able to quantify how epibenthic communities can significantly vary over time in high-energy coastal environment, and our final survey suggests that the ecological succession was still in progress five years after the deployment of artificial reefs. Thus, maintaining long-term continuous survey of coastal artificial reef habitats will be key to better discriminate between long-term ecological successions and shorter-term variability.

中文翻译：

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在潮汐环境下，附生群落对与海洋可再生能源设施有关的人工鱼礁的演替

摘要

尽管表皮动物群落对人工结构的定殖总体上有据可查，但我们对定殖过程的理解在很大程度上限于低能环境。在这项研究中，我们监测了与位于高能水动力环境中的潮汐能试验场相关的不同结构的表皮定殖。使用基于图像的四年水下调查，我们表征了定居在两种人工结构以及周围自然栖息地的表皮动物组合的分类组成随空间和时间的变化。我们的结果表明，在两个人工生境中，生态演替遵循相似的趋势，但在调查结束时出现了不同的生境特定群落。这些人造结构的部署导致在天然硬质基质不稳定且强烈暴露于沉积物磨损的环境中增加了稳定的基质。尽管在我们的调查结束时，定居在人工栖息地上的表生动物群落不太可能达到成熟阶段，但这些群落支持结构复杂的分类单元，从而促进了当地多样性的总体增长。我们能够量化在高能沿海环境中表生动物群落如何随时间发生显着变化，我们的最终调查表明，在部署人工鱼礁五年后，生态演替仍在进行中。从而，