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After her mother is murdered and her father is accused, 16-year-old Tate McCoy tries to prove her father's innocence and to enjoy the summer with her best friend Kale, a crush on her swim instructor, and time outdoors.

Ecological theory predicts that positive interactions among organisms will increase across gradients of increasing abiotic stress or consumer pressure. This theory has been supported by empirical studies examining the magnitude of ecosystem engineering across environmental gradients and between habitat settings at local scale. Predictions that habitat setting, by modifying both biotic and abiotic factors, will determine large‐scale gradients in ecosystem engineering have not been tested, however. A combination of manipulative experiments and field surveys assessed whether along the east Australian coastline: (1) facilitation of invertebrates by the oyster Saccostrea glomerata increased across a latitudinal gradient in temperature; and (2) the magnitude of this effect varied between intertidal rocky shores and mangrove forests. It was expected that on rocky shores, where oysters are the primary ecosystem engineer, they would play a greater role in ameliorating latitudinal gradients in temperature than in mangroves, where they are a secondary ecosystem engineer living under the mangrove canopy. On rocky shores, the enhancement of invertebrate abundance in oysters as compared to bare microhabitat decreased with latitude, as the maximum temperatures experienced by intertidal organisms diminished. By contrast, in mangrove forests, where the mangrove canopy resulted in maximum temperatures that were cooler and of greater humidity than on rocky shores, we found no evidence of latitudinal gradients of oyster effects on invertebrate abundance. Contrary to predictions, the magnitude by which oysters enhanced biodiversity was in many instances similar between mangroves and rocky shores. Whether habitat‐context modifies patterns of spatial variation in the effects of ecosystem engineers on community structure will depend, in part, on the extent to which the environmental amelioration provided by an ecosystem engineer replicates that of other co‐occurring ecosystem engineers.

The effective use of ecosystem engineers to conserve biodiversity requires an understanding of the types of resources an engineer modifies, and how these modifications vary with biotic and abiotic context. In the intertidal zone, oysters engineer ecological communities by reducing temperature and desiccation stress, enhancing the availability of hard substrate for attachment, and by ameliorating biological interactions such as competition and predation. Using a field experiment manipulating shading, predator access and availability of shell substrate at four sites distributed over 900 km of east Australian coastline, we investigated how the relative importance of these mechanisms of facilitation vary spatially. At all sites, and irrespective of environmental conditions, the provision of hard substrate by oysters enhanced the abundance and richness of invertebrates, in particular epibionts (barnacles and oyster spat) and grazing gastropods. Mobile arthropods utilised the habitat provided by disarticulated dead oysters more than live oyster habitat, whereas the abundance of polychaetes and bivalves were much greater in live oysters, suggesting the oyster filter-feeding activity is important for these groups. In warmer estuaries, shading by oysters had a larger effect on biodiversity, whereas in cooler estuaries, the provision of a predation refuge by oysters played a more important role. Such knowledge of how ecosystem engineering effects vary across environmental gradients can help inform management strategies targeting ecosystem resilience via the amelioration of specific environmental stressors, or conservation of specific community assemblages.

As the world’s population continues to grow, the way in which ocean industries interact with ecosystems will be key to supporting the longevity of food and social securities. Aquaculture is crucial to the future supply of seafood, but challenges associated with negative impacts could impede increased production, especially production that is efficient and safe for the environment. Using the typology established by The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity Initiative, we describe how marine aquaculture could be influential in supporting ecosystem services beyond solely the production of goods, through provisioning services, regulating services, habitat or supporting services, and cultural services. The provision of these services will vary, depending on functional traits of culture species, biotic and abiotic characteristics of the surrounding environment, farm design, and operational standards. Increasing recognition, understanding, and accounting of ecosystem service provision by mariculture through innovative policies, financing, and certification schemes may incentivize active delivery of benefits and may enable effects at a greater scale.

The construction of artificial structures, such as seawalls, is increasing globally, resulting in loss of habitat complexity and native species biodiversity. There is increasing interest in mitigating this biodiversity loss by adding topographic habitat to these structures, and/or seeding them with habitat-forming species. Settlement tile experiments, comparing colonisation of species to more and less complex habitats, have been used to inform eco-engineering interventions prior to their large-scale implementation. Most studies have focused on applying one type of intervention (either adding habitat structure or seeding with native organisms), so it is unclear whether there are greater benefits to biodiversity when multiple interventions are combined. Using a fully orthogonal experiment, we assessed the independent and interactive effects of habitat structure (flat vs. crevice/ridges) and seeding with native oysters (unseeded vs. seeded) on the biodiversity of four different functional groups (sessile and mobile taxa, cryptobenthic and pelagic fishes). Concrete tiles (flat unseeded, flat seeded, complex unseeded and complex seeded) were deployed at two sites in Sydney Harbour and monitored over 12 months, for the survival and colonisation of oysters and the species density and abundances of the four functional groups. The survival of seeded oysters was greater on the complex than flat tiles, at one of the two sites, due to the protective role of crevices. Despite this, after 12 months, the species density of sessile invertebrates and the percentage cover of seeded and colonising oysters did not differ between complex and seeded tiles each of which supported more of these variables than the flat unseeded tiles. In contrast, the species density of mobile invertebrates and cryptobenthic fishes and the MaxN of pelagic fishes, at 1 month, were only positively influenced by seeding with oysters, which provided food as well as habitat. Within the complex seeded and unseeded tiles, there was a greater species density of sessile taxa, survival and percentage cover of oysters in the crevices, which were more humid and darker at month 12, had lower high temperature extremes at months 1 and 12, than on the ridges or flat tiles. Our results suggest that eco-engineering projects which seek to maximise the biodiversity of multiple functional groups on seawalls, should apply a variety of different microhabitats and habitat-forming species, to alter the environmental conditions available to organisms.

Habitat heterogeneity is considered a primary causal driver underpinning patterns of diversity, yet the universal role of heterogeneity in structuring biodiversity is unclear due to a lack of coordinated experiments testing its effects across geographic scales and habitat types. Furthermore, key species interactions that can enhance heterogeneity, such as facilitation cascades of foundation species, have been largely overlooked in general biodiversity models. Here, we performed 22 geographically distributed experiments in different ecosystems and biogeographical regions to assess the extent to which variation in biodiversity is explained by three axes of habitat heterogeneity: the amount of habitat, its morphological complexity, and capacity to provide ecological resources (e.g. food) within and between co-occurring foundation species. We show that positive and additive effects across the three axes of heterogeneity are common, providing a compelling mechanistic insight into the universal importance of habitat heterogeneity in promoting biodiversity via cascades of facilitative interactions. Because many aspects of habitat heterogeneity can be controlled through restoration and management interventions, our findings are directly relevant to biodiversity conservation. Species interactions that can enhance habitat heterogeneity such as facilitation cascades of foundation species have been overlooked in biodiversity models. This study conducted 22 geographically distributed experiments in different ecosystems and biogeographical regions to assess the extent to which biodiversity is explained by three axes of habitat heterogeneity in facilitation cascades.

1. Ecosystem engineers that modify the thermal environment experienced by associated organisms might assist in the climate change adaptation of species. This depends on the ability of ecosystem engineers to persist and continue to ameliorate thermal stress under changing climatic conditions—traits that may display significant intraspecific variation. 2. In the physically stressful intertidal, the complex three-dimensional structure of oysters provides shading and traps moisture during aerial exposure at low tide. We assessed variation in the capacity of a faster- and slower-growing population of the Sydney Rock Oyster, Saccostrea glomerata, to persist, form three-dimensional structure and provide a cool microhabitat to invertebrates under warmer conditions. 3. The two populations of oysters were exposed to a temperature gradient in the field by attaching them to passively warmed white, grey and black stone pavers and their growth, survivorship and colonisation by invertebrates was monitored over a 12-month period. 4. Oysters displayed a trade-off between fast growth and thermal tolerance. The growth advantage of the fast-growing population diminished with increasing substrate temperature, and at higher temperatures, the faster-growing oysters suffered greater mortality, formed less habitat, and were consequently less effective at ameliorating low-tide air temperature extremes than slower-growing oysters. The greater survivorship of slower-growing oysters, in turn, produced a cooler microclimate which fed back to further bolster oyster survivorship. Invertebrate recruitment increased with habitat cover and was greater among the slower than the faster-growing population. 5. Our results show that the capacity of ecosystem engineers to serve as microhabitat refugia to associated organisms in a warming climate displays marked intraspecific variation. Our study also adds to growing evidence that fast growth may come at the expense of thermal tolerance.

1. Along urbanised coastlines, urban infrastructure is increasingly becoming the dominant habitat. These structures are often poor surrogates for natural habitats, and a diversity of eco-engineering approaches have been trialled to enhance their biodiversity, with varying success. 2. We undertook a quantitative meta-analysis and qualitative review of 109 studies to compare the efficacy of common eco-engineering approaches (e.g. increasing texture, crevices, pits, holes, elevations and habitat-forming taxa) in enhancing the biodiversity of key functional groups of organisms, across a variety of habitat settings and spatial scales. 3. All interventions, with one exception, increased the abundance or number of species of one or more of the functional groups considered. Nevertheless, the magnitude of effect varied markedly among groups and habitat settings. In the intertidal, interventions that provided moisture and shade had the greatest effect on the richness of sessile and mobile organisms, while water-retaining features had the greatest effect on the richness of fish. In contrast, in the subtidal, small-scale depressions which provide refuge to new recruits from predators and other environmental Stressors such as waves, had higher abundances of sessile organisms while elevated structures had higher numbers and abundances of fish. The taxa that responded most positively to eco-engineering in the intertidal were those whose body size most closely matched the dimensions of the resulting intervention. 4. Synthesis and applications. The efficacy of eco-engineering interventions varies among habitat settings and functional groups. This indicates the importance of developing site-specific approaches that match the target taxa and dominant stressors. Furthermore, because different types of intervention are effective at enhancing different groups of organisms, ideally a range of approaches should be applied simultaneously to maximise niche diversity.

As the United Nations develops a post-2020 global biodiversity framework for the Convention on Biological Diversity, attention is focusing on how new goals and targets for ecosystem conservation might serve its vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’ 1 , 2 . Advancing dual imperatives to conserve biodiversity and sustain ecosystem services requires reliable and resilient generalizations and predictions about ecosystem responses to environmental change and management 3 . Ecosystems vary in their biota 4 , service provision 5 and relative exposure to risks 6 , yet there is no globally consistent classification of ecosystems that reflects functional responses to change and management. This hampers progress on developing conservation targets and sustainability goals. Here we present the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Global Ecosystem Typology, a conceptually robust, scalable, spatially explicit approach for generalizations and predictions about functions, biota, risks and management remedies across the entire biosphere. The outcome of a major cross-disciplinary collaboration, this novel framework places all of Earth’s ecosystems into a unifying theoretical context to guide the transformation of ecosystem policy and management from global to local scales. This new information infrastructure will support knowledge transfer for ecosystem-specific management and restoration, globally standardized ecosystem risk assessments, natural capital accounting and progress on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Ecosystem Typology has been developed to provide a systematic framework for data on all of Earth’s ecosystems in a unified theoretical context to support biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services.

Autogenic ecosystem engineers often provide cool microhabitats which are used by associated organisms to reduce thermal extremes. The value of such habitats is, however, dependent on key structural traits of the ecosystem engineer, and the intensity and duration of thermal exposure. Using an experimental mesocosm that mimicked the rocky intertidal environment, we assessed how the spatial configuration of the habitat formed by an autogenic ecosystem engineer, the oyster, influences its capacity to mitigate heat stress experienced by invertebrates during simulated emersion periods on tropical, Hong Kong rocky shores. At the average temperature experienced during summer low tides, oyster habitat ameliorated environmental and organismal temperatures, irrespective of the structural configuration of the oyster bed. As temperatures increased, however, vertically orientated oysters provided microclimates that facilitated cooler invertebrate body temperatures than horizontal beds, which no longer conferred any associational benefit as compared to bare rock surfaces. In the absence of oysters, physiological indicators of stress to associated organisms (i.e., heart rate and osmolality) increased with the intensity and duration of exposure to high temperatures. Such effects were, however, mitigated by association with vertical but not horizontal oyster configurations. In contrast, the osmolality of the oysters was not related to temperature, suggesting they remained in a state of metabolic quiescence throughout emersion. Structural traits such as the spatial configuration of ecosystem engineers are therefore critical to their effectiveness in environmental amelioration. As such, variations in the morphological traits of ecosystem engineers, which have important implications for their ecological role, need to be incorporated into conservation and restoration projects aimed at climate change adaptation. A plain language summary is available for this article. Plain Language Summary