Fine-Scale Heterogeneity of a Cold-Water Coral Reef and Its Influence on the Distribution of Associated Taxa

• Published in: Frontiers in Marine Science
• Main Authors: Price, David M., Lim, Aaron, Callaway, Alexander, Eichhorn, Markus P., Wheeler, Andrew J., Lo Iacono, Claudio, Huvenne, Veerle A.I.
• Other Authors: Marine Institute (Ireland), Natural Environment Research Council (UK), University of Southampton, European Commission, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media 2021
• Subjects: Cold-water corals; Point pattern analysis; Structure from motion; Spatial patterns; Photomosaic; landscape ecology; NE Atlantic; Lophelia pertusa
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/242656; https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.556313; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000270; https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000739

20 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.556313/full#supplementary-material.-- Data Availability Statement: The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation. Some datasets presented in this article are not readily available because parts of the study are ongoing, and cannot be made public until they have been fully analysed. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to DP, [e-mail] and AW, [e-mail] Benthic fauna form spatial patterns which are the result of both biotic and abiotic processes, which can be quantified with a range of landscape ecology descriptors. Fine- to medium-scale spatial patterns (<1–10 m) have seldom been quantified in deep-sea habitats, but can provide fundamental ecological insights into species’ niches and interactions. Cold-water coral reefs formed by Desmophyllum pertusum (syn. Lophelia pertusa) and Madrepora oculata are traditionally mapped and surveyed with multibeam echosounders and video transects, which limit the ability to achieve the resolution and/or coverage to undertake fine-scale, centimetric quantification of spatial patterns. However, photomosaics constructed from imagery collected with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) are becoming a prevalent research tool and can reveal novel information at the scale of individual coral colonies. A survey using a downward facing camera mounted on a ROV traversed the Piddington Mound (Belgica Mound Province, NE Atlantic) in a lawnmower pattern in order to create 3D reconstructions of the reef with Structure-from-Motion techniques. Three high resolution orthorectified photomosaics and digital elevation models (DEM) >200 m2 were created and all organisms were geotagged in order to illustrate their point pattern. The pair correlation function was used to establish whether organisms demonstrated a clustered pattern (CP) at various scales. We further applied a point ...