Colonization of Coastal and Estuarine Environments

• Main Authors: Staton, Joseph L., Canada, Brian A., Borgianini, Stephen A., Barkel, Karen M.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2020
• Subjects: Pacific; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190637842.003.0010

Coastal and estuarine environments are some of the best-known and most well-studied ecosystems in the world in that these regions lie in close proximity to much of the world’s human population. The crustaceans that inhabit these environments, both as adults and larvae, are adapted to the high productivity that characterizes such areas. We summarize their adaptations and behaviors and the physical characteristics of coastal zones and estuaries in shallower waters (<200 m). In an attempt to objectively review worldwide diversity and endemism within the Crustacea from coastal and estuarine environments, we have used open access global collection data and developed a novel application of an informatics principle (term frequency-inverse document frequency [ TF-IDF ]) to identify regions with unique faunal assemblages that typify some coastal, shallow waters to assess potential endemism (as assessed by our technique) across groups at differing taxonomic levels. Crustaceans, as a whole, show highest species richness and endemism in three clusters (using the TF-IDF assessment): the eastern temperate north Atlantic, the western temperate north Atlantic, and the western tropical south Pacific. Peracarid and decapod species dominate the collection data, making up 94% of all species analyzed. Peracarids dominate species richness across all temperate zones, yet their highest predicted coastal endemism appears in the eastern north Atlantic by our index. Our analyses using this new method focused on species from less than 200 m depth worldwide. Upcoming impacts of changing sea levels and increases in global temperature will likely have their greatest impact on the fauna of these zones.