Sofia Henriques

Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera (IPMA) · Divisão de Modelação e Gestão de Recursos da Pesca (DivRP)

1. Conservation science increasingly focuses on how ecosystem functioning is affected by anthropogenic pressures, which implies an understanding of the structural and functional changes in biological assemblages and requires indicators to detect such changes within a suitable time frame. 2. A novel approach that combines the spatial analysis of fi...

Knowledge of global patterns of biodiversity and regulating variables is indispensable to develop predictive models. The present study used predictive modelling approaches to investigate hypotheses that explain the variation in fish species richness between estuaries over a worldwide spatial extent. Ultimately, such models will allow assessment of...

Aim: We present the first global biogeographical regionalization of estuaries, assessing how dispersal limitation and/or environmental filtering mechanisms drive the patterns of fish assemblage composition among and within biogeographical regions. Location: Estuaries worldwide. Methods: A bootstrapped hierarchical cluster analysis was applied to de...

Assessing trait-environment relationships is crucial for predicting effects of natural and human-induced environmental change on biota. We compiled a global database of fish assemblages in estuaries, functional traits of fishes and ecosystem features of estuaries. And we quantified the relative importance of ecosystem features as drivers of pattern...

Anthropogenic pressures on marine ecosystems are increasing worldwide, causing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and driving species towards risk of extinction. To protect vulnerable species and habitats, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are increasingly established worldwide as conservation measures. Seahorses act as flagship species fo...

Over one-third of all elasmobranch species are at risk of extinction worldwide. This study aims to contribute to their conservation worldwide through a case study that combines georeferenced data on species presence and abundance with spatial distribution of human activities, through a Spatial Conflict Risk Index (SCRI). The SCRI pinpoints possible...

Trait-based approaches are a powerful tool, as they not only improve understanding of ecological complexity and functioning but also allow comparison across different ecosystems and biogeographical regions. They may be used to unveil ecosystem processes and assess community structures, but their great potential becomes limited when dealing with sca...

Trait-based approaches are a powerful tool, as not only they improve the understanding on ecological complexity and functioning, but also allow the comparison across different ecosystems and biogeographic regions. They may be used to unveil ecosystem processes and assess community structures, but their great potential becomes limited when dealing w...

O “Guia de Boas Práticas para a Monitorização e Gestão de Áreas Marinhas Protegidas” (Guia) é um produto do projeto “BiodivAMP – Desenvolvimento de Ferramentas para a Monitorização e Proteção de Biodiversidade em Áreas Marinhas Protegidas ao longo da Costa Portuguesa” (FA_06_2017_045). O projeto enquadra-se em eixos prioritários de apoio à gestão,...

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) require effective indicators to assess their performance, in compliance with the goals of relevant national and international commitments. Achieving and prioritizing shortlists of multidisciplinary indicators demands a significant effort from specialists to depict the multiple conservation and socioeconomic interests,...

This chapter provides an overview of the main drivers of change in estuarine systems, their expected causes and impacts on estuarine fish and fisheries. An analysis of global, regional and local patterns of estuarine fish and how climate‐induced change may impact estuarine systems and their fish communities is provided. We also examine the main env...

Connectivity plays a key role in biodiversity conservation as it sustains ecological processes, such as migrations, important for the maintenance of populations. Connectivity is especially relevant for species that rely on different realms during their life cycle or use different realms daily or seasonally (multi‐realm species). However, efforts to...

The ICES Working Group on comparative analyses between European Atlantic and Mediterra-nean Ecosystems to move towards an Ecosystem-based Approach to Fisheries (WGCOMEDA) recently completed its second three-year cycle. WGCOMEDA was established in 2014 and works in cooperation with other groups within the ICES Integrated Ecosystem Assessments Steeri...

The overexploitation of marine resources has led to a decrease in species abundance over time in many marine ecosystems worldwide. But as new fishers arise throughout the years, the perception of local abundance changes which might result in a “shifting baselines syndrome”. We investigated how the perception of fishers about species abundance chang...

Converting assemblages of marine protected areas (MPAs) into functional MPA networks requires political will, multidisciplinary information, coordinated action and time. We developed a new framework to assist planning environmental representativity in a network across the marine space of Portugal, responding to a political commitment to protect 14%...

Estuaries are threatened by intense and continuously increasing human activities. Here we estimated the sensitivity of fish assemblages in a set of estuaries distributed worldwide (based on species vulnerability and resilience), and the exposure to cumulative stressors and coverage by protected areas in and around those estuaries (from marine, estu...

Biodiversity is currently viewed as a framework encompassing multiple facets of the variety of life, including taxonomic and functional aspects. Species richness and composition of fish assemblages in estuaries is defined by global to local processes acting on community colonization. The present study further investigates how biodiversity of fish a...

The present study aimed to understand how assembly mechanisms drive the global and regional patterns of fish assemblage composition in estuaries. The approach used applied a bootstrapped hierarchical cluster analysis based on pairwise beta-dissimilarities (Beta sim) of fish assemblages between 393 estuaries to define biogeographical units. A set of...

The Selvagens Islands are located in the northeastern Atlantic between the Canary Islands and Madeira Island. As a result of their small dimensions, remote location and harsh sea conditions only a few studies have been conducted to describe their marine species diversity. We were able to identify 29 new coastal fish species, an increase of 33% in t...

As recently reinforced in the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), knowledge on the location and intensity of human impacts on marine ecosystems is critical for effective marine management and conservation. Human interaction with ecosystems has to be accounted for in order to efficiently implement marine management strategies. In the pres...

In fish community assessment, measures of functional integrity have shown to be the most suited to detect anthropogenic impacts in a background of natural variation. However, minimising background noise involves the establishment of homogeneous areas, which is still mostly done based on taxonomic approaches or by relying on abiotic factors. The pre...

Worldwide concern about the environmental threats and need for sustainable development has led to increased efforts to understand and assess anthropogenic pressure effects. However, the development of indicators for marine ecosystems is still at an early stage, due to their high spatial and temporal complexity. Based on several structural and funct...

Policy-makers are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of coastal fish communities for the integrity of marine habitats. However, initial assessments are often done prior to any major funding and available published data is sometimes seen as a low-cost approach to this problem. The present work constituted an exercise on marine fish assemb...

The recent revision on the taxonomic status of Lepadogaster lepadogaster resulted in the division of this species into L. lepadogaster and L. purpurea, the clarification of each species' distribution ranges and the elimination of L. zebrina (now in synonymy with L. lepadogaster). This new taxonomic status led to the need of clarifying the early dev...

In this paper the Marine Fish Community Index (MFCI) for the assessment of ecological status of marine environment is proposed. The MFCI was divided into 4 typologies: Rocky subtidal; shallow, intermediate and deep soft-bottoms. Based on the typical community associated to each typology and the DPSIR analysis performed, a set of metrics were select...

The assessment of ecological status of marine fish communities required by the marine strategy framework directive (MSFD) emphasises the need for fish-based ecological indices in marine waters. In this study we adapt five estuarine multimetric indices to the marine environment and apply them in three types of substrates, analysing the metrics respo...

Larval development of Gobius xanthocephalus with descriptions of the ontogeny of the main structures, changes in pigmentation patterns and allometric relationships are presented for the first time. No previous descriptions of G. xanthocephalus larvae are available and therefore field collected larvae were compared with larvae obtained under control...