Increased disturbance, loss and change of habitat, harvesting, alterations of climate and numerous types of contamination are the apparently inevitable consequences of expansion of human populations. This is most apparent in coastal areas around the world because that is where most people live. In response to this conspiracy of environmental insults, measuring and understanding ecological changes and, ultimately, predicting these changes are critical scientific responses to the rash of humans infecting the planet.
To illustrate progress in such ecological research programmes, examples will be discussed of different types of study. Change of habitat by replacing natural intertidal areas by seawalls is widespread. The fauna on seawalls are, however, not as diverse as on nearby intertidal shores (even vertical ones). Worse, even though populations might be conserved by provision of artificial habitats, there will be problems because their reproduction is not maintained. Harvesting can have profound impacts, as will be illustrated by decreased diversity of invertebrates (including molluscs) in response to a fishery for urchins. The coming (and already started) debacle of global climate change may devastate intertidal molluscs because of increased sea-level and air-temperature. These will be illustrated using results from experimental studies. Larger-scale patterns in response to urbanization require proper quantitative sampling of diversity. Some of the problems of interpretation will be outlined. The potential use of gastropods to measure changed environments will be outlined.
Being a progress report, definitive answers will be sparse – but at least it is known where the research programmes are going and why and how they can be used to help underpin managerial decisions (where management is actually possible).
