Multiple dimensions of biodiversity in the benthos: implications for marine spatial planning

Shelf seas are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth, playing important roles in nutrient cycling, climate regulation, and food production. Benthic macroinvertebrates are key components of these ecosystems, forming an important and highly diverse component of marine food webs, with organisms from multiple phyla interacting in complex communities. Benthic invertebrates are also sensitive to a range of environmental and anthropogenic stressors, and are useful indicators of environmental change. The aim of this project is to mobilise new data products and computational capabilities to better quantify how benthic communities vary in time and space, across multiple dimensions of diversity (taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic), in response to environmental and anthropogenic drivers.