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Diversity, diversity... But let’s be practical here: what is the functional diversity?


Rocky shore of one of the islets in Tjarno bay. Credits: Svenja Neumann.

We are the Rockies. We are investigating the secrets of rocky shores fauna in the beautiful and faraway land in the North, where you haven’t been, somewhere off the coast Tjarno in Sweden. This is the first blog about our summer school project for IMBRSea masters. Let’s rock&roll!

The biodiversity of rocky shores has been studied so many times, right? So probably the research into how the faunal diversity changes with the high wave exposure (i.e. rough coastal conditions) is standard even for a summer school project? But here we have a twist for you! As proper ecologists, we are very pragmatic, and we are interested in how the functional diversity in the faunal communities of rocky shores is influenced by different wave exposures. We want to know how the roughness of the sea changes the faunal community, its groups and inter-group relationships, and the traits of organisms that finally impact ecosystem functioning. (I hope it is understandable).

To uncover the secrets of functional diversity, we decided we will survey rocky shores around Tjarno with different wave exposure gradient. Therefore, as proper Indiana Jones’ team we found 3 islets on a map, each one further out to the open sea.

Map of Tjarno Bay showing the proposed survey locations.

We assumed that the 3 islets will show a gradient of wave exposure but to test that, we decided we will build devices to test the wave forces acting on the rocky shores of these islets. Therefore, the plan is: to measure the wave exposure of the 3 islets, survey faunal communities of their rocky shores, find out the functions in the community of the species found and see if there are more functional groups and complex interactions in the less exposed, more exposed areas, or it is not dependent at all on the wave exposure. What do we have? Very ambitious plan and belief in ourselves. What do we still need to get? Technological skills, identification skills and… wet notes. Wish us luck!

by Karolina M. Czechowska

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