Marine Animal Forests

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxxii

   PDF

2. Animal Forests of the World: An Overview

   • Sergio Rossi, Lorenzo Bramanti, Andrea Gori, Covadonga Orejas

   Pages 1-28

3. Taxonomy, Biodiversity, Biogeography, and Evolution of Animal Forests

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29

      PDF

   2. Caribbean Coral Reefs: Past, Present, and Insights into the Future

      • Héctor Reyes-Bonilla, Eric Jordán-Dahlgren

      Pages 31-72

   3. Brazilian Marine Animal Forests: A New World to Discover in the Southwestern Atlantic

      • Marcelo de Oliveira Soares, Tito Monteiro da Cruz Lotufo, Leandro Manzoni Vieira, Sula Salani, Eduardo Hajdu, Helena Matthews-Cascon et al.

      Pages 73-110

   4. Diversity and Evolution of Octocoral Animal Forests at Both Sides of Tropical America

      • Juan Armando Sánchez

      Pages 111-143

   5. Sponge Grounds as Key Marine Habitats: A Synthetic Review of Types, Structure, Functional Roles, and Conservation Concerns

      • Manuel Maldonado, Ricardo Aguilar, Raymond J. Bannister, James J. Bell, Kim W. Conway, Paul K. Dayton et al.

      Pages 145-183

   6. Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems

      • Sam Kahng, Joshua M. Copus, Daniel Wagner

      Pages 185-206

   7. Animal Forests in Deep Coastal Bottoms and Continental Shelves of the Mediterranean Sea

      • Andrea Gori, Giorgio Bavestrello, Jordi Grinyó, Carlos Dominguez-Carrió, Stefano Ambroso, Marzia Bo

      Pages 207-233

   8. Global Biodiversity in Cold-Water Coral Reef Ecosystems

      • Lea-Anne Henry, J. Murray Roberts

      Pages 235-256

   9. Coexistence in Cold Waters: Animal Forests in Seaweed-Dominated Habitats in Southern High-Latitudes

      • César A. Cárdenas, Américo Montiel

      Pages 257-276

   10. Animal Forests in the Chilean Fjords: Discoveries, Perspectives, and Threats in Shallow and Deep Waters

       • Günter Försterra, Verena Häussermann, Jürgen Laudien

       Pages 277-313

   11. Antarctic Marine Animal Forests: Three-Dimensional Communities in Southern Ocean Ecosystems

       • Julian Gutt, Vonda Cummings, Paul K. Dayton, Enrique Isla, Anke Jentsch, Stefano Schiaparelli

       Pages 315-344

   12. Drawing the Line at Neglected Marine Ecosystems: Ecology of Vermetid Reefs in a Changing Ocean

       • Marco Milazzo, Maoz Fine, Emanuela Claudia La Marca, Cinzia Alessi, Renato Chemello

       Pages 345-367

   13. Where Seaweed Forests Meet Animal Forests: The Examples of Macroalgae in Coral Reefs and the Mediterranean Coralligenous Ecosystem

       • Charles F. Boudouresque, Aurélie Blanfuné, Mireille Harmelin-Vivien, Sébastien Personnic, Sandrine Ruitton, Thierry Thibaut et al.

       Pages 369-396

   14. Hydroids (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa): A Neglected Component of Animal Forests

       • Cristina Gioia Di Camillo, Giorgio Bavestrello, Carlo Cerrano, Cinzia Gravili, Stefano Piraino, Stefania Puce et al.

       Pages 397-427

   15. Evolution of the Marine Animal Forest: EvoDevo of Corals, Sea Anemones, and Jellyfishes

       • Emma Rangel-Huerta, Griselda Avila-Soria, Ernesto Maldonado

       Pages 429-444

   16. Metabarcoding Techniques for Assessing Biodiversity of Marine Animal Forests

       • Owen S. Wangensteen, Xavier Turon

       Pages 445-473

   17. Deep-Sea Suprabenthic Communities: The Forgotten Biodiversity

       • Inmaculada Frutos, Angelika Brandt, Jean Claude Sorbe

       Pages 475-503

4. Structure and Function of the Animal Forests

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 505-505

      PDF

During the last decades there has been an increasing evidence of drastic changes in marine ecosystems due to human-induced impacts, especially on benthic ecosystems. The so called “animal forests” are currently showing a dramatic loss of biomass and biodiversity all over the world. These communities are dominated by sessile suspension feeder organisms (such as sponges, corals, gorgonians, bivalves, etc.) that generate three-dimensional structures, similar to the trees in the terrestrial forest. The animal forest provide several ecosystem services such as food, protection and nursery to the associated fauna, playing an important role in the local hydrodynamic and biogeochemical cycles near the sea floor and acting also as carbon sinks. The present book focus its attention on these three dimensional animal structures including, for the first time, all the different types of animal forests of the world in a single volume.

• Benthic suspension feeders
• Biogenic structures
• Ecosystem engineers
• Marine conservation
• Trophic ecology

• Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

  Sergio Rossi

• Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Ecogéochimie des Environnements Benthiques (LECOB) Observatoire Océanologique, Banyuls/Mer, France

  Lorenzo Bramanti

• Departament d’Ecologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

  Andrea Gori

• Instituto Español de Oceanografía, Centro Oceanográfico de Baleares, Palma, Mallorca, Spain

  Covadonga Orejas

Sergio Rossi

Sergio Rossi is a research scientist specialized in marine natural resources and biological oceanography, focusing his attention in the health indicators of coastal benthic populations, coastal biological processes, flows of matter and energy in the benthic-pelagic coupling system, in the transplantation and aquaculture of marine organisms, and the management and conservation of marine wildlife. He is especially interested in the processes and conservation of the marine animal forests of the world.

Lorenzo Bramanti

Lorenzo Bramanti is a Marine Ecologist expert in conservation, spatial distribution, population and metapopulation dynamics of benthic suspension feeders. His field of research is at  the interconnection between functional ecology and conservation biology, focussing on the demographic processes regulating the dynamics of long living species, in particular corals, and their implications for conservation and marine spatial planning.

Andrea Gori

Andrea Gori is a marine biologist working on the study of the ecology and ecophysiology of marine ecosystem engineering species to provide understanding for the sustainable management and conservation of marine ecosystems located from the coastal area to the continental shelf and slope. The research has been developed combining SCUBA diving with the use of Remotely Operated Vehicles and manned submersibles for the extensive study of benthic species over their entire spatial distribution, as the best way to achieve a comprehensive understanding of their ecology and the variability of their responses to environmental features and human induced stressors.

Covadonga Orejas

Covadonga Orejas is a benthic ecologist, specialized on the study of Cold-water corals. Her main research interests focus on the biology and ecology of benthic communities dominated by those organisms and in general on the Marine Vulnerable Ecosystems (MVE). Her research deal with the study of the occurrence and spatial distribution patterns of CWCs linking those with their eco-physiological responses; she also investigate the species auto-ecology in order to understand their trophic ecology, reproduction and growth. She carried out most of her research on deep shelf areas in different oceans, using mostly non-invasive methods and applying her studies to the conservation of these fragile ecosystems.

 

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