Habitat quality of estuarine nursery grounds: Integratingnon-biological indicators and multilevel biological responses in Solea senegalensis

Estuaries are highly valuable ecosystems that provide various goods and services to society, such as foodprovision and supporting nursery habitats for various aquatic species. Estuarine habitat quality assess-ment is thus critical in managing both ecological and economic value. In this work, various biological andnon-biological indicators of habitat quality in estuarine nursery areas were determined, encompassinglocal environmental conditions, chemical contamination, anthropogenic pressures, juvenile Solea sene-galensis condition, biomarkers response to contamination and juvenile density. The various indicatorsprovided an integrated view on habitat quality and their responses were broadly concordant. Nurseryquality assessment based on anthropogenic pressure indicators and fish biomarker responses were verysimilar, signaling nursery areas with higher anthropogenic pressure in Tejo and Ria de Aveiro estuaries.Yet, favorable environmental conditions across all sites could have contributed to lessen the potentialhazardous biological effects of exposure to anthropogenic stressors, resulting in soles’ fairly good con-dition and generally high juvenile density. Nevertheless, a mismatch between high juvenile density andhigh estuarine contribution to adult coastal populations was observed in areas with higher anthropogenicpressures. Although a causal relationship cannot be established, the results emphasize the need to fullyunderstand how the estuarine period spent in estuaries and local processes determine the quantity andquality of juveniles exported to marine adult populations, which is critical to achieve the full potentialof the fish production service of estuaries and coastal stock replenishment.

Palavras-chave

Estuary Quality indicators Drivers Nursery role Connectivity

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10451/38364

DOI

10.1016/j.ecolind.2015.05.064

Coleções

MARE - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais

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