DOI: 10.5061/dryad.k5n98
title: Data from: Characterizing driver-response relationships in marine pelagic ecosystems for improved ocean management

description: Scientists and resources managers often use methods and tools that assume
 ecosystem components respond linearly to environmental drivers and human
 stressor. However, a growing body of literature demonstrates that many
 relationships are non-linear, where small changes in a driver prompt a
 disproportionately large ecological response. Here we aim to provide a
 comprehensive assessment of the relationships between drivers and
 ecosystem components to identify where and when non-linearities are likely
 to occur. We focus our analyses on one of the best-studied marine systems,
 pelagic ecosystems, which allowed us to apply robust statistical
 techniques on a large pool of previously published studies. In this
 synthesis, we (1) conduct a wide literature review on single
 driver-response relationships in pelagic systems, (2) use statistical
 models to identify the degree of non-linearity in these relationships, and
 (3) assess whether general patterns exist in the strengths and shapes of
 non-linear relationships across drivers. Overall we found that
 non-linearities are common in pelagic ecosystems, comprising at least 52%
 of all driver-response relationships. This is likely an underestimate, as
 papers with higher quality data and analytical approaches reported
 non-linear relationships at a higher frequency - on average 11% more.
 Consequently, in the absence of evidence for a linear relationship, it is
 safer to assume a relationship is non-linear. Strong non-linearities can
 lead to greater ecological and socio-economic consequences if they are
 unknown (and/or unanticipated), but if known they may provide clear
 thresholds to inform management targets. In pelagic systems, strongly
 non-linear relationships are often driven by climate and trophodynamic
 variables, but are also associated with local stressors such as
 overfishing and pollution that can be more easily controlled by managers.
 Even when marine resource managers cannot influence ecosystem change, they
 can use information about threshold responses to guide how other stressors
 are managed and to adapt to new ocean conditions. As methods to detect and
 reduce uncertainty around threshold values improve, managers will be able
 to better understand and account for ubiquitous non-linear relationships.
description: Summary statistics and
 ancillary data of published single driver-response relationships in
 pelagic marine ecosystemsWe created a database of
 published single driver-response relationships in marine pelagic
 ecosystems that were deemed significant based on p values ≤ 0.05 or were
 included in best-fit models identified through model selection. Multiple
 summary statistics were recorded (when available) in the database in an
 effort to explore variation in driver-response relationships in the
 present study and to be made available for researchers for future studies.
 The summary statistics include published or derived shapes of the
 relationships (linear, non-linear or specific functional forms), sample
 size, quantitative estimates of ecological thresholds, p values, R^2,
 deviance explained, correlation and regression coefficients, and model
 covariates (if multivariate model). In addition, we collected ancillary
 data on study characteristics to explore the variation in driver-response
 relationships and to identify the most robust papers with respect to
 statistical methods. The ancillary data in our database include ecosystem
 type (enclosed bay or sea, coastal pelagic, continental shelf and
 continental slope/oceanic), local region, ocean basin, large marine
 ecosystem, temporal scale of study, functional level (i.e., individual,
 population, community) and species trophic level (TL 1-4) of ecological
 response, primary productivity (mgC/mg2/day) and the statistical methods
 used by the authors. Estimates of species trophic level and primary
 productivity were obtained from the Sea Around Us Project
 (http://www.seaaroundus.org/). See Supplement Table S1 for additional
 description of data columns. The references in the database are
 cross-referenced with Table S1 Literature Cited.docx.HunsickerEtAl_EcoAppsDatabase_10.13.15.xlsx