Ordination method for projecting marine beta diversity distribution of Lesser Sunda Island

Long-term human impacts on the ocean cause a gradual decrease in the diversity and density of marine species. Health and resilience of an ecosystem can be lost as a result of decreased species richness, which can also negatively affect ecosystem processes like the nitrogen cycle and fisheries. The distribution of multifaceted marine organism variability is connected to beta diversity. Evaluating marine beta diversity at the regional basis is becoming increasingly important in order to support conservation planning. The aim of this study was to assess marine beta diversity distribution in Lesser Sunda Island as it is a major priority in marine conservation across coral triangle region. We obtained occurrence records for marine species in Lesser Sunda Island waters from the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) database. Meanwhile, we used Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) to project the beta diversity distance matrix along reduced axes. The result showed acceptable ordination of beta diversity with low stress value as the validation measure.