TY - JOUR
T1 - Viviparous sea snakes can be used as bioindicators for diverse marine environments
AU - Rasmussen, Arne Redsted
AU - Hay-Schmidt, Anders
AU - Boneka, Farnis
AU - Allentoft, Morten
AU - Sanders, Kate Laura
AU - Elmberg, Johan
PY - 2021/5/2
Y1 - 2021/5/2
N2 - Shallow tropical marine ecosystems are under great anthropogenic pressure due to habitat destruction, overfishing, shrimping, climate change, and tourism. This is an issue of global concern as such environments hold a tremendous biodiversity much of which remains to be described. The present situation urgently calls for time- and resource-efficient methods to identify and delineate the most valuable remaining areas and to set up priorities for their management and conservation. Using indicator species can be a way to accomplish this goal. In this paper we evaluate whether viviparous sea snakes can serve as bioindicators for other rare or cryptic tropical marine fauna. Based on seven generally acknowledged criteria for bioindicators, we argue that using viviparous sea snakes as bioindicators can help monitoring marine habitats to gauge the effects of climate change, habitat change and loss, decline in biodiversity and other anthropogenic changes. However, to maximize their efficacy as bioindicators, deeper knowledge about viviparous sea snakes natural history is urgently needed. Topics for expanded research programs include the taxonomy of some groups, their breeding and feeding biology, habitat selection and their geographical distribution. Despite these gaps in our understanding, we argue that viviparous sea snakes can be utilized as bioindicators of marine ecosystem health.
AB - Shallow tropical marine ecosystems are under great anthropogenic pressure due to habitat destruction, overfishing, shrimping, climate change, and tourism. This is an issue of global concern as such environments hold a tremendous biodiversity much of which remains to be described. The present situation urgently calls for time- and resource-efficient methods to identify and delineate the most valuable remaining areas and to set up priorities for their management and conservation. Using indicator species can be a way to accomplish this goal. In this paper we evaluate whether viviparous sea snakes can serve as bioindicators for other rare or cryptic tropical marine fauna. Based on seven generally acknowledged criteria for bioindicators, we argue that using viviparous sea snakes as bioindicators can help monitoring marine habitats to gauge the effects of climate change, habitat change and loss, decline in biodiversity and other anthropogenic changes. However, to maximize their efficacy as bioindicators, deeper knowledge about viviparous sea snakes natural history is urgently needed. Topics for expanded research programs include the taxonomy of some groups, their breeding and feeding biology, habitat selection and their geographical distribution. Despite these gaps in our understanding, we argue that viviparous sea snakes can be utilized as bioindicators of marine ecosystem health.
KW - Anthropogenic changes
KW - Conservation
KW - Herpetology
KW - Marine habitat
KW - monitoring
U2 - 10.26757/pjsb2020b14013
DO - 10.26757/pjsb2020b14013
M3 - Tidsskriftartikel
SN - 2508-0342
VL - 14
SP - 1
EP - 16
JO - Philippine Journal of Systematic Biology
JF - Philippine Journal of Systematic Biology
IS - 2
ER -