Document Type

Article

Publication Title

PLoS ONE

Abstract

Habitat loss and fragmentation are leading causes of species extinctions in terrestrial, aquatic and marine systems. Along coastlines, natural habitats support high biodiversity and valuable ecosystem services but are often replaced with engineered structures for coastal protection or erosion control. We coupled high-resolution shoreline condition data with an eleven-year time series of fish community structure to examine how coastal protection structures impact community stability. Our analyses revealed that the most stable fish communities were nearest natural shorelines. Structurally complex engineered shorelines appeared to promote greater stability than simpler alternatives as communities nearest vertical walls, which are among the most prevalent structures, were most dissimilar from natural shorelines and had the lowest stability. We conclude that conserving and restoring natural habitats is essential for promoting ecological stability. However, in scenarios when natural habitats are not viable, engineered landscapes designed to mimic the complexity of natural habitats may provide similar ecological functions.

First Page

1

Last Page

12

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118580

Publication Date

6-3-2015

Department

Marine and Environmental Sciences

Comments

Must use original publisher's citation to cite this work.

Copyright: © 2015 Scyphers et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability Statement: The shoreline condition data used in our study are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Alliance Data Portal (http:// gomaportal.org/geoportal/). The fish abundance data may be requested by contacting the Alabama Department of Natural Resources (http://www. outdooralabama.com/contact/MarineResources.cfm).

Funding: This study was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) SEES Fellowship to SS (OCE-1215825). JG was supported by NSF grant OCE-12-03859. MB was supported by a Pew Fellowship and the Lyda Hill Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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