Download Lizzie Tyler, Paul Somerfield, Edward Vanden Berghe, Julie

How much do we know about the biology of UK
marine species?
Lizzie Tyler, Paul Somerfield, Edward Vanden Berghe, Julie Bremner, Emma Jackson,
Olivia Langmead, Deng Palomares & Tom Webb
contact: [email protected], Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, web.me.com/tom.webb/meme
The seas around Britain are as well studied as any in the world. The work of generations of marine biologists
means that we have a reasonable idea of which species occur where. But it remains an open question what
many of these species actually do - what biological characteristics they possess, which will determine their
interactions with each other and with the environment. We decided to document the availability of biological
data for UK marine species, to establish the extent of our knowledge - or ignorance - of these organisms which
perform so many important functions.
Biological data We defined 8 biological traits (fig 1),
aiming to capture key life history characteristics whilst
remaining sufficiently general to be relevant across the
diverse taxa in our database.
Which species? Of the c.16K taxa recorded in UK waters, we
selected those which met the following criteria:
✦ marcrobenthic invertebrates or demersal fish (i.e. species bigger
than c.1mm living in, on or adjacent to the sea bed)
✦ ‘core’ community members (i.e., species occurring in >1% of
samples from at least one of five methodologically
complementary, spatially extensive biodiversity surveys)
✦ taxonomy well resolved (i.e., a valid species name according to
the World Register of Marine Species, www.marinespecies.org)
For each species, we scored the presence or absence
of information for each of the 8 traits. We searched
various sources of data, principally the Biological Traits
Information Catalogue (www.marlin.ac.uk/biotic) and
FishBase (www.fishbase.org).
All original data that we collected has been passed on
to Biotic to make it publicly available.
This resulted in a list of 973 species, from 15 phyla, with 148 fish and
825 invertebrates.
76%
23%
Feeding Method
14%
Diet
18%
Longevity
15%
Reproduction
7
6
starfish
bivalves
26%
crabs, shrimp etc.
barnacles etc.
24%
gastropods
Fecundity 8% 76%
21%
Larval Dispersal
22%
Adult Dispersal
0
19%
75%
hydrozoans
invertebrates
fish
400
5
4
3
2
polychaetes
29%
52% 26%
200
invertebrates
fish
sharks & rays
23%
72%
78%
sea urchins
33%
86%
72%
100%
available trait data
Body Size
80%
8
bony fish
600
800
Number of Species
Fig 1. There is little data available for most
of the traits we examined. The situation is
better in fish (data on most traits available for
around 3/4 species, and body size available for
all species) than in invertebrates (data for
fewer than 1/3 species for all traits except
body size). Invertebrates make up 85% (825 of
973) of the species, and 14 of the 15 phyla of
UK marine organisms in our database.
sea cucumbers
1
sponges
0
0
2
4
6
8
Number of Traits
Fig 2. Biological knowledge varies within
and between higher taxa. Most taxonomic
groups include examples of both well-known
(high number of traits) and poorly-known (few
traits) species. Bony fish are typically wellknown, but even here all we know about one
species of goby is its body size. For many
invertebrate groups, the median knowledge
score is either 0 or 1 traits.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
log2(global number of records in OBIS + 1)
Fig 3. Biological knowledge
increases with biogeographic
knowledge. In both fish and
invertebrates, species which are
often observed (i.e. occur regularly
in the Ocean Biogeographic
Information System, iobis.org) are
also biologically well-known (lots
of available trait data).
There is surprisingly little biological information readily available for British marine species. The situation is
almost certain to be worse for other, less well-studied regions of the world. This means that studies of, for
example, the functioning of marine ecosystems will be based on biological data from a small, non-random
subset of species. Options for filling this knowledge gap include statistical approaches (e.g. inferring biology
from that of related species), basic natural history studies, and ensuring that data held in libraries, and in the
filing cabinets, notebooks, and heads of marine biologists is made available to the research community.
You’ve seen the poster, now read the paper: Tyler et al. (2011) Extensive gaps and biases in our knowledge of a well-known fauna: implications
for integrating biological traits into macroecology. Global Ecology & Biogeography, in press. For updates, follow @tomjwebb