Sponges in shallow tropical and temperate reefs are important habitats for marine invertebrate biodiversity
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sponges in shallow tropical and temperate reefs are important habitats for marine invertebrate biodiversity Ying‑Yueh Chin1 · Jane Prince1 · Gary Kendrick1 · Muhammad Azmi Abdul Wahab2 Received: 16 April 2020 / Accepted: 22 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Habitat availability underpins the diversity and distribution of benthic marine communities. Sponges are significant structural components of seabeds; therefore, understanding sponge-community associations are important for the effective management of marine biodiversity. Invertebrate communities were quantified from 11 sponge species having distinct morphologies from Ningaloo Reef (tropical) and Rottnest Island (temperate), Western Australia. Communities from substrate adjacent to sponges were additionally sampled for comparisons to sponge-associated fauna. Gross and fine-scale morphological features of sponge host species were quantified to assess their effects on faunal abundance and diversity. A total of 3966 individuals from 125 taxa were extracted, showing low co-occurrences of taxa from both sponges and the surrounding substrate (Ningaloo 8.9%; Rottnest 11.2%). Four out of the 11 sponges supported higher fauna abundance compared to their surrounding substrate, including Haliclona sp. NTM148 (Ningaloo; 1.21 ± 0.54 N.cm−3, 60 × higher than substrate) and Monanchora clathrata (Rottnest; 2.87 ± 1.7 N.cm−3, 32 × higher than substrate). These communities were dominated by the barnacle Acastinae sp.4 (100%) and sedentary polychaete Spionidae sp. 1 (99%), respectively, highlighting strong host-specific associations. Sponge size (volume), % of internal space, minimum diameter of internal space, and gross morphological complexity were important at explaining variation in faunal assemblage, with larger sponges having more internal space of larger minimum canal diameter supporting higher community abundance. This study highlights the significance of large and long-lived sponges as sources of unique marine biodiversity that are yet to be discovered and the importance of sponge gardens for the conservation of cryptic marine biodiversity.
Introduction Sponges are important components of tropical and temperate reefs, and can dominate the benthos in biomass and cover at some locations globally (Heyward et al. 2010; Maldonado Responsible Editor: M. G. Chapman. Reviewed by J M A. Vega, G. Paulay and undisclosedexperts. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-020-03771-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Muhammad Azmi Abdul Wahab [email protected] 1
School of Biological Sciences, Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, University of Western Australia, and UWA Oceans Institute, Crawley, WA, Australia
Australian Institute of Marine Science, Arafura Timor Research Facility, Brinkin, NT 0810, Australia
2
et al. 2017). The significant abundance and diversity of sponges on corals reefs is
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