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<\/p>\nAbout a third of people around the world rely on protein from the world\u2019s oceans, rivers, and lakes. But the full nutritional value of this seafood depends upon the species diversity in the ecosystem where it was extracted, a new study by researchers at Yale and the University of British Columbia finds.<\/p>\n
High levels of biodiversity in aquatic settings offer a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids crucial for human health, including nutrients that are lacking in ecosystems where the number of species have been reduced by overfishing, pollution, or climate change, researchers report April 5 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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\u201cWhat we found is that biodiversity is crucial to human health,\u201d said Yale\u2019s Joey Bernhardt, a G. Evelyn Hutchinson Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and co-author of the paper.<\/p>\n
While humans can achieve their protein requirements even with seafood from less-diverse systems, meeting their need for key micronutrients such as calcium, iron, and zinc requires high levels of biodiversity. Seafood sourced from biodiverse ecosystems can help combat a phenomenon known as \u201chidden hunger,\u201d in which people have access to enough calories, but not enough micronutrients, Bernhardt said.<\/p>\n
The effects of aquatic biodiversity change on human health are particularly acute in coastal areas of the world where populations are heavily dependent on seafood in their diets.<\/p>\n
For the study, Bernhardt and co-author Mary I. O\u2019Connor of the University of British Columbia, analyzed 7,245 nutrient samples from 801 marine and freshwater finfish and invertebrates. They found that different species have distinct and complementary nutrient profiles. While they detected little difference in the protein content among the aquatic species, they found that concentrations of micronutrients \u2014 including calcium and iron \u2014 and essential fatty acids varied significantly.\u00a0 The greater the variety of species, the better these diets were able to achieve nutrient levels recommended by the U.S. Institute of Medicine.<\/p>\n
The results illustrate the importance of monitoring and preserving biodiversity in changing aquatic ecosystems across the globe, the authors say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we have known that biodiversity on land is important for benefits such as forest production, this study provides new evidence that the benefits of biodiversity in oceans and freshwaters are as great as on land,\u201d Bernhardt said. \u201cEcological concepts of biodiversity can deepen our understanding of nature\u2019s benefits to people and unite sustainability goals for biodiversity and human well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
About a third of people around the world rely on protein from the world\u2019s oceans,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"yoast_head":"\n