Introduction Sponges are increasingly dominant components of coral reefs in the Tropical Western Atlantic, yet patterns of their diversity across spatial scales remain poorly quantified. Methods We applied a hierarchical sampling design across 13 reefs and five spatial scales —ecoregions (thousands of kilometers), subregions (hundreds of kilometers), coral reefs (tens of kilometers), localities (hundreds of meters), and quadra...

In the oceans, ecological analyses of pelagic amphipods have mainly focused on the epipelagic zone with few studies in the deep waters. In this study, a coarse-scale vertical analysis, between 0 and 1000 m depth, was performed in the southern Gulf of Mexico during summer and winter. We hypothesize greater differences between the epi-and mesopelagic zones during the summer, because of a stronger vertical gradient in environment...

Despite the ecological importance of sandy beaches, the diversity and distribution of macrocrustacean communities in the eastern Mexican coast (Mexican coast of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea) remain understudied. As the first large-scale sampling effort along the eastern Mexican coast, this study aimed to estimate macrocrustacean diversity and evaluate sampling methodologies, while providing historical context for macro...

Functional diversity measures help to understand the underlying mechanisms explaining the relationship between organisms and environment. This work examined the mesozooplankton community of an estuary under the hypothesis that the upper (< 25 psu) and lower (> 25 psu) zones are functionally different in terms of feeding strategies, trophic groups, camouflage, buoyancy, and defense against predators, due to the salinity gradien...

Acquiring marine biodiversity data is difficult, costly, and time-consuming, making it challenging to understand the distribution and abundance of life in the ocean. Historically, approaches to biodiversity sampling over large geographic scales have advocated for equivalent effort across multiple sites to minimize comparative bias. When effort cannot be equalized, techniques such as rarefaction have been applied to minimize bi...

Aim We evaluated whether patterns of species diversity (α, β and γ) of rocky shore assemblages followed latitudinal gradients (i.e. LDGs) along the South American coasts, and tested hypotheses related to potential processes sustaining or disrupting the expected LDG pattern at various spatial scales. Location Coasts of South America. Taxon Macroalgae and sessile/slow‐moving macrofauna on intertidal rocky shores. Methods We eval...