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Browsing by Author "Bettignies, Thibaut de"

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  • Leveraging the blue economy to transform marine forest restoration
    Publication . Filbee-Dexter, Karen; Wernberg, Thomas; Barreiro, Rodolfo; Coleman, Melinda A.; Bettignies, Thibaut de; Feehan, Colette J.; Franco, Joao N.; Hasler, Berit; Louro, Ines; Norderhaug, Kjell M.; Staehr, Perter A. U.; Tuya, Fernando; Verbeek, Jan
    The UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration is a response to the urgent need to substantially accelerate and upscale ecological restoration to secure Earth’s sustainable future. Globally, restoration commitments have focused overwhelmingly on terrestrial forests. In contrast, despite a strong value proposition, efforts to restore seaweed forests lag far behind other major ecosystems and continue to be dominated by small-scale, short-term academic experiments. However, seaweed forest restoration can match the scale of damage and threat if moved from academia into the hands of community groups, industry, and restoration practitioners. Connecting two rapidly growing sectors in the Blue Economy—seaweed cultivation and the restoration industry—can transform marine forest restoration into a commercial-scale enterprise that can make a significant contribution to global restoration efforts.
    2021Journal article Restricted access Show more
  • Local flexibility in feeding behaviour and contrasting microhabitat use of an omnivore across latitudes
    Publication . Leclerc, Jean-Charles; Bettignies, Thibaut de; Bettignies, Florian de; Christie, Hartvig; Franco, João N.; Leroux, Cédric; Davoult, Dominique; Pedersen, Morten F.; Filbee‑Dexter, Karen; Wernberg, Thomas
    As the environment is getting warmer and species are redistributed, consumers can be forced to adjust their interactions with available prey, and this could have cascading effects within food webs. To better understand the capacity for foraging flexibility, our study aimed to determine the diet variability of an ectotherm omnivore inhabiting kelp forests, the sea urchin Echinus esculentus, along its entire latitudinal distribution in the northeast Atlantic. Using a combination of gut content and stable isotope analyses, we determined the diet and trophic position of sea urchins at sites in Portugal (42° N), France (49° N), southern Norway (63° N), and northern Norway (70° N), and related these results to the local abundance and distribution of putative food items. With mean estimated trophic levels ranging from 2.4 to 4.6, omnivory and diet varied substantially within and between sites but not across latitudes. Diet composition generally reflected prey availability within epiphyte or understorey assemblages, with local affinities demonstrating that the sea urchin adjusts its foraging to match the small-scale distribution of food items. A net “preference” for epiphytic food sources was found in northern Norway, where understorey food was limited compared to other regions. We conclude that diet change may occur in response to food source redistribution at multiple spatial scales (microhabitats, sites, regions). Across these scales, the way that key consumers alter their foraging in response to food availability can have important implication for food web dynamics and ecosystem functions along current and future environmental gradients.
    2021Journal article Restricted access Show more