Contributors: Institut méditerranéen de biodiversité et d'écologie marine et continentale (IMBE); Avignon Université (AU)-Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut de recherche pour le développement IRD : UMR237-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Azti Tecnalia, Centro Tecnológico del Mar y los Alimentos (Marine Resarch Unit) (Azti); King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Saudi Arabia (KAUST); AZTI - Tecnalia; Dipartimento di Scienze della Vita e dell’Ambiente; Polytechnic University of Marche Ancona, Italy / Università Politecnica delle Marche Ancona, Italia (UNIVPM); Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze del Mare Rome, Italie (CoNISma); ANR-11-IDEX-0001,Amidex,INITIATIVE D'EXCELLENCE AIX MARSEILLE UNIVERSITE(2011); ANR-11-LABX-0061,OTMed,Objectif Terre : Bassin Méditerranéen(2011); European Project: 308392,EC:FP7:ENV,FP7-ENV-2012-two-stage,DEVOTES(2012)
نبذة مختصرة : International audience ; We investigated the validity of Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) as monitoring tools for hard bottoms across a wide geographic and environmental range. We deployed 36 ARMS in the northeast Atlantic, northwest Mediterranean, Adriatic and Red Sea at 7–17 m depth. After 12–16 months, community composition was inferred from photographs, in six plate-faces for each ARMS. Overall, we found a highly significant effect of sea region, site (within seas), and plate-face on community composition. Plate-faces thus represent distinct micro-habitats and provide pseudo-replicates, increasing statistical power. Within each sea region taken individually, there was also a highly significant effect of site and plate-face. Because strong effects were obtained despite the fusion of taxonomic categories at high taxonomic ranks (to ensure comparability among biogeographic provinces), ARMS photo-analysis appears a promising monitoring tool for each sea region. We recommend keeping three ARMS per site and analyzing more numerous sites within a sea region to investigate environmental effects.
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