Taxonomic level for assessing anthropogenic effects on soft-bottom annelids communities from a tropical coastal lagoon

NURIA MÉNDEZ; AGUSTINA FERRANDO

BULLETIN OF MARINE SCIENCE

ROSENSTIEL SCH MAR ATMOS SCI

Lugar: Miami; Año: 2015 vol. 91 p. 419 - 431

0007-4977

Taxonomic Sufficiency (TS) is a useful analysis technique for rapid and reliable procedures in marine impact assessment and monitoring. The coastal lagoon Estero de Urías has been subjected to the effect of different anthropogenicactivities (shrimp farms, a thermoelectric plant, a slaughterhouse, a fishprocessing factory, a harbour and urban sewage) for several decades, which constitutes a good example for TS application. The characterization of this lagoon through the study of soft-bottom annelids has identified zones subjected to different degrees of organic pollution, which lead to the need for monitoringprograms. TS involves the identification of taxa to higher taxonomic levels than species (like genus or family) without losing statistically relevant information. This study investigated whether reduced taxonomy can be used todetect anthropogenic effects in this lagoon through the analyses of published and unpublished data of polychaetes and oligochaetes. MDS ordinations, the pairwise Spearman correlations test, the ´second-stage´ MDS ordination, ANOSIM and BIO-ENV analyses showed that in general, results obtained at species, genus and family levels followed similar patterns. Data at genus and family levels were as effective as species level and followed similar trends to those found in previous studies. Therefore, further analyses using family level data are recommended for monitoring and characterization of this tropical coastal lagoon.