Marine epibenthic functional diversity on Flemish Cap (northwest Atlantic)—Identifying trait responses to the environment and mapping ecosystem functions

Aim: To characterize the functional diversity and selected ecological functions of marine epibenthic invertebrate communities at the ecosystem scale and to evaluate the relative contributions of environmental filtering, including bottom-contact fishing, and competitive interactions to benthic community assembly. Location: Flemish Cap, an ecosystem production unit and fishing bank in the high seas of the north-west Atlantic Ocean. Methods: Through the use of Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC), we have explored seven community response traits to the environment applied to 105 epibenthic species and evaluated the influence of such traits on the community assembly processes. Assumed bioturbation, nutrient cycling and habitat provision functions, linked to individual or a combination of biological traits, were mapped using random forest modelling. Results: Functional richness within benthic communities reached an asymptote for trawl sets with roughly more than 30 species. Assemblages on top of the Flemish Cap (