Conclusion
Human-related disturbances affect all marine ecosystems by disrupting
major interdependent abiotic and biotic factors (Goudie 2018) and these
unprecedented threats are likely to increase in the near future,
stressing the need to understand and document ecosystems responses
(Duarte et al. 2020). Preserving marine biodiversity via protection of
species richness has been an explicit aim of management and conservation
policies (Qureshi 2017). The functional and phylogenetic associations
between species, however, have been gradually incorporated to conserve
multiple dimensions of ecosystem diversity. We show that functional and
phylogenetic diversity metrics can be derived from eDNA compositional
data rapidly sampled from the field. Once the pipeline linking raw eDNA
to traits and phylogeny can be automatized, the direct computation of
indices will allow a fast translation into indicators that are useful
for management, which can serve the monitoring of reef biodiversity over
time. Our study provides the foundation for the generation of ecological
indices for the long-term monitoring of marine ecosystems. Further
analyses at a larger scale covering a wider range of habitats and reef
types will enable these diversity patterns to be tested more broadly.
Importantly, findings from this study provide further directions for the
conservation of coral reefs backed by evolutionary history and trait
data.