Poster presented by Lea-Anne Henry at the International Symposium on Deep Sea Corals, Amsterdam 2012.

1. Maps and models of biodiversity and ecosystem function
at the Mingulay Reef Complex, Scotland
Lea-Anne Henry, Juan Moreno Navas & J. Murray Roberts
The integration of acoustic remote sensing technology with biological research has lead to
many advancements in our knowledge of the biodiversity and ecosystem function of
cold-water coral reefs off western Scotland. Not only has it been used to model spatial
patterns in biodiversity, but we have launched new research into how seabed bathymetry
can be used to map and model ecosystem functions such as benthic trophic structure
and the occurrence of deepwater shark spawning and potential nursery grounds.
Reef biodiversity
Fig. 1: Models of beta diversity using
multibeam and sidescan sonar survey
data show the greatest species turnover
on the sedimentary trails of the
complex, in contrast to the coral
mounds that are distinguished
by a much more characteristic reef fauna.
ship image ©University of Washington
Reef ecosystem function
Fig. 2: Local hotspots of biodiversity on
the best studied reef in the complex,
Mingulay Area 1, are located in areas with
strong currents and high cover of mixed
dead and living Lophelia pertusa
framework, which greatly enhances
species richness.
Fig. 3: Spatially explicit models of beta
diversity on the reef complex show
significant associations between reef
trophic structure and seabed bathymetry.
Predators and scavengers are not as
constrained by seabed terrain as are filter
and suspension feeders such as sponges,
cnidarians, bivalves and tubeworms. Thus,
remotely-sensed bathymetry can be used
to predict how ecosystem functions such
as filter- and suspension-feeding are
distributed across the reef complex.
Contact Fig. 4: We discovered egg cases deposited by the oviparous
deepwater catshark Galeus melastomus on Banana Reef and
l.henry@hw.ac.uk Mingulay Area 1. Habitat mapping using ground-truthed and
j.m.roberts@hw.ac.uk multibeam data revealed a high niche conservatism in
spawning grounds on the complex: capsules were only found
T: +44 (0)131 451 3463
nested in living Lophelia pertusa colonies located on gently
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sloping sites on the leeward side of prevailing currents in local
seabed depressions. One of our current initiatives is to use this
multibeam dataset to predict the occurrence of other spawning
Centre for Marine Biodiversity & sites in order to see if we can map this aspect of ecosystem
function at the scale of the complex.
Biotechnology, School of Life Sci-
ences, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, Scotland, Further reading
Henry et al. 2010. Coral Reefs
EH14 4AS, UK Roberts et al. 2005. Coral Reefs.
Roberts et al. 2009. Mar Ecol Prog Ser
Acknowledgements
Funding for this research is provided by the EU FP7 Project HERMIONE (grant agreement 226354).
For more information
www.lophelia.org