Recovery of a northern New England salt marsh plant community from winter icing

Ewanchuk, Patrick J.; Bertness, Mark D.

doi:10.1007/s00442-003-1303-7

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Occasionally, storms and/or ice scour (in New England) and excessive sediment accumulation after, for example, major dust storms (causing overexposure at low tide) followed by erosion (in Banc d'Arguin) reset cordgrass and seagrass habitats to bare cobbles and sand, respectively [32,34], yielding mosaics of different ecosystem development stages. The 'natural experiments' formed by the resulting habitat mosaics of different stages of ecosystem development provide an excellent opportunity to study how habitat modifiers affect food webs.…”

Section: Materials and Methods (A) Study Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How habitat-modifying organisms structure the food web of two coastal ecosystems

et al. 2016

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The diversity and structure of ecosystems has been found to depend both on trophic interactions in food webs and on other species interactions such as habitat modification and mutualism that form non-trophic interaction networks. However, quantification of the dependencies between these two main interaction networks has remained elusive. In this study, we assessed how habitat-modifying organisms affect basic food web properties by conducting in-depth empirical investigations of two ecosystems: North American temperate fringing marshes and West African tropical seagrass meadows. Results reveal that habitat-modifying species, through non-trophic facilitation rather than their trophic role, enhance species richness across multiple trophic levels, increase the number of interactions per species (link density), but decrease the realized fraction of all possible links within the food web (connectance). Compared to the trophic role of the most highly connected species, we found this non-trophic effects to be more important for species richness and of more or similar importance for link density and connectance. Our findings demonstrate that food webs can be fundamentally shaped by interactions outside the trophic network, yet intrinsic to the species participating in it. Better integration of non-trophic interactions in food web analyses may therefore strongly contribute to their explanatory and predictive capacity.

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Section: Materials and Methods (A) Study Sitesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How habitat-modifying organisms structure the food web of two coastal ecosystems

et al. 2016

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“…Disturbances such as high tides, strong wave, strong wind, flooding, winter ice (high-latitude salt marsh), and human activities are ubiquitous in salt marshes (Ewanchuk and Bertness 2003;Tessier et al 2002). One consequence of disturbance is litter removal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intraspecific interactions shift from competitive to facilitative across a low to high disturbance gradient in a salt marsh

Zhang

Wang

2016

Plant Ecol

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Disturbances are ubiquitous among salt marshes, and disturbances such as litter removal may form stressful environmental conditions. The stressgradient hypothesis (SGH) predicts that the relative importance of facilitation and competition between species will vary inversely to each other across abiotic stress gradients. However, how intraspecific interactions vary across disturbance levels, and whether they follow the SGH has not been investigated. To test the SGH with intraspecific interactions within Suaeda salsa individuals, we assessed individual survival in established fully mapped salt marsh plots with two treatments, disturbed, litter removal and control, undisturbed plots. Recently developed spatial statistics were applied to distinguish between random processes, intraspecific facilitation, scramble competition, and contest competition underlying the spatial patterns at different spatial scales, growth stages, and disturbance levels. We found evidence that intraspecific interactions among S. salsa individuals across disturbance levels tended to support the SGH, but this support depended on time and space. Intraspecific interactions were more likely to show positive density dependence in disturbed plots, particularly at the seedling period and when individuals were separated by\9 cm. However, positive density dependence was not detected in undisturbed plots. The protective effects of litter on seedlings, which were lost in undisturbed sites, may have been at least partly simulated at high seedling densities. Mortality in disturbed sites was not random, and facilitation had a more important influence than competition on population dynamics in high disturbance sites. However, the influence of competition on population dynamics, specifically scramble competition was also clearly important.

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“…The most obvious and frequently studied response to disturbances in salt marshes has been the degradation and loss of plant biomass (Turner 1987, Baldwin & Mendelssohn 1998, Ewanchuk & Bertness 2003; however, physiological responses may occur long before there are visible signs of stress (Mendelssohn & McKee 1992). Moreover, the effects of many disturbances, such as increases in flooding frequency, pollutant contamination, and introduced species, can occur gradually and be difficult to detect (Mendelssohn & McKee 1992, Weilhoefer 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foliar DMSO:DMSP ratio and metal content as indicators of stress in Spartina alterniflora

McFarlin¹,

Alber²

2013

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

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We evaluated 2 potential indicators of stress, viz. the ratio of dimethylsulfoxide to dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSO:DMSP) and foliar metals, in Spartina alterniflora collected from areas affected by 4 different disturbances (sudden marsh dieback, horse grazing, increased snail densities, wrack deposition) across 20 marshes in Georgia, USA. The DMSO:DMSP ratio was a stronger and more consistent indicator of stress than either DMSP or DMSO concentrations alone, with significantly higher ratios occurring in leaves and stems collected from affected compared to healthy areas in all 4 disturbance types. Foliar metal concentrations also differed in affected compared to healthy areas. Of 20 metals evaluated, concentrations of 19 were increased in leaves collected from edge and affected areas. Multidimensional scaling using the entire suite of metals showed separation between plants from affected and healthy areas, but no difference among disturbance types. In contrast, chlorophyll a concentrations were not significantly different between affected and healthy areas, and did not correlate with variation in either of the 2 indicators. These results suggest that the DMSO:DMSP ratio and foliar metal suite are sensitive indicators of sublethal stress in Spartina, capable of identifying stress before there are visible signs such as chlorophyll loss. The fact that both indicators were consistent across a variety of disturbance types suggests that they may be primarily responsive to general oxidative stress and thus, broadly useful tools for evaluating the health of salt marsh habitat in the field. Spartina alterniflora salt marsh near St. Simons Island, GA, with a dieback area along the edge of the tidal creek.

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Recovery of a northern New England salt marsh plant community from winter icing

Cited by 33 publications

References 39 publications

How habitat-modifying organisms structure the food web of two coastal ecosystems

How habitat-modifying organisms structure the food web of two coastal ecosystems

Intraspecific interactions shift from competitive to facilitative across a low to high disturbance gradient in a salt marsh

Foliar DMSO:DMSP ratio and metal content as indicators of stress in Spartina alterniflora

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