Benthic taxonomic and functional diversity change across a depth gradient in the Southern Benguela Shelf ecoregion

Functional trait-based approaches improve biodiversity assessment and have consequently been gaining traction in ecology, including marine benthic studies. However, taxonomic diversity is still the default biodiversity metric applied to monitor benthic community responses to environmental variation despite not always representing functional diversity change. Therefore, we used Biological Traits Analysis (BTA) to quantify functional diversity for infauna and epifauna communities collected from the same locations across a depth gradient in the Southern Benguela Shelf ecoregion. Infauna experienced an increase in functional uniqueness with depth, whereas epifauna experienced an increase in functional redundancy with depth. As a result, the epifauna species assemblage predicted 43 % of the epifauna trait assemblage, whereas the infauna species assemblage predicted only 8 % of the infauna trait assemblage. These findings suggest that taxonomic diversity and functional diversity changes are not congruent within and between marine benthic faunal groups. We emphasize the need to utilise both biodiversity metrics when quantifying marine biodiversity for conservation and management objectives.