Strong linkages between depth, longevity and demographic stability across marine sessile species

Understanding the role of the environment in shaping the evolution of life histories remains a major challenge in ecology and evolution. We synthesize longevity patterns of marine sessile species and find strong positive relationships between depth and maximum lifespan across multiple sessile marine taxa, including corals, bivalves, sponges and macroalgae. Using long-term demographic data on marine sessile and terrestrial plant species, we show that extreme longevity leads to strongly dampened population dynamics. We also used detailed analyses of Mediterranean red coral, with a maximum lifespan of 532 years, to explore the life-history patterns of long-lived taxa and the vulnerability to external mortality sources that these characteristics can create. Depth-related environmental gradients-including light, food availability, temperature and disturbance intensity-drive highly predictable distributions of life histories that, in turn, have predictable ecological consequences for the dynamics of natural populations. © 2018 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Funding. This study was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Innovation Biorock project (CTM2009-08045), the Smart project (CGL2012-32194), the TOTAL Foundation Perfect project and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no 689518 (MERCES). This output reflects only the authors’ view and the European Union cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. I.M.-S. was supported by a FPI grant (BES-2013-066150), C.L. by a Ramon y Cajal (RyC-2011- 08134) and J.B.L. by a postdoctoral grant (SFRH/BPD/74400/2010) from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Support for D.F.D. came from National Science Foundation awards 1340024 and 1242355. I.M.-S., C.L., J.B.L. and J.G. are part of the Marine Conservation research group (2014 SGR 1297) from the Generalitat de Catalunya. Acknowledgements. We thank K. Kaplan, M. Pages, A. Griffith and one anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on early versions of this manuscript.