Using the Fossil Record to Establish a Baseline and Recommendations for Oyster Mitigation in the Mid-Atlantic U.S.

Kusnerik, Kristopher M.; Lockwood, Rowan; Grant, Amanda N.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73795-9_5

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 74 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Publications from the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences provided length-at-age data for Brown Shoal (BS) in the James River (n = 947, hydraulic patent tong, 2006-2008, 10-23 ppt salinity) [35] and seven sites on the Lynnhaven River (n = 697, quadrat, 2005-2008, 15-30 ppt salinity; table 1) [36]. For additional site information, see Kusnerik et al [16]. Size-frequency and lifespan distributions for oysters greater than 35 mm were normalized using a Box-Cox transformation then compared across all Pleistocene and modern localities using parametric statistics (t-tests).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…age-mixed) deposit. Time averaging, or the mixing of fossils from different years in a single deposit [74], is difficult to quantify directly for this deposit, because the only dating technique that can be applied to this locality (amino acid racemization) has yielded age estimates of low temporal resolution [16]. As an alternative, ratios of living versus dead (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By the time oyster monitoring was established in the 1940s, reefs were demolished, suggesting that oyster managers have never actually observed a healthy reef in the Chesapeake Bay [2,13,14]. The fossil record of the bay stretches back half a million years and provides the only direct data available on the age structure, size range and population density of oysters [2,15,16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A conservation palaeobiological perspective on Chesapeake Bay oysters

Lockwood

Mann

2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The eastern oyster plays a vital role in estuarine habitats, acting as an ecosystem engineer and improving water quality. Populations of Chesapeake Bay oysters have declined precipitously in recent decades. The fossil record, which preserves 500 000 years of once-thriving reefs, provides a unique opportunity to study pristine reefs to establish a possible baseline for mitigation. For this study, over 900 fossil oysters were examined from three Pleistocene localities in the Chesapeake region. Data on oyster shell lengths, lifespans and population density were assessed. Comparisons to modern Crassostrea virginica , sampled from monitoring surveys of similar environments, reveal that fossil oysters were significantly larger, longer-lived and more abundant than modern oysters from polyhaline salinity zones. This pattern results from the preferential harvesting of larger, reproductively more active females from the modern population. These fossil data, combined with modern estimates of age-based fecundity and mortality, make it possible to estimate ecosystem services in these long-dead reefs, including filtering capacity, which was an order of magnitude greater in the past than today. Conservation palaeobiology can provide us with a picture of not just what the Chesapeake Bay looked like, but how it functioned, before humans. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The past is a foreign country: how much can the fossil record actually inform conservation?’

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A conservation palaeobiological perspective on Chesapeake Bay oysters

Lockwood

Mann

2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The abundance of threatened coastal water bodies in this area [35][36][37][38] makes such a purpose even more urgent to plan efficient restoration actions. Relationships between past and present-day environmental conditions can be efficiently evaluated through a conservation paleobiology perspective, most commonly achieved through invertebrate macrofauna (e.g., mollusks and corals; [12,39]). In the North Adriatic area, such an approach successfully outlined the long-term resilience and persistence of late Pleistocene-Holocene marine molluscan assemblages to major environmental changes under natural forcings in contrast to the abrupt, unprecedented shift in community composition and structure that occurred in the Anthropocene [40,41].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation Paleobiology as a Tool to Define Reference Conditions in Naturally Stressed Transitional Settings: Micropaleontological Insights from the Holocene of the Po Coastal Plain (Italy)

Barbieri

Rossi

Ghosh

et al. 2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The key role of paralic environments as providers of ecosystem services, associated with their increasingly threatened state, led to the definition of international water management policies aimed to improve ecological quality status (EcoQs). Restoration actions rely on the definition of reference conditions, which is a particularly challenging task in naturally stressed transitional environments. In the present work, we apply the diversity index Exp(H’bc) on benthic foraminifer assemblages from two anthropogenically unimpacted transitional to coastal Holocene sediment successions of the Po coastal plain, in order to assess past EcoQs (PaleoEcoQs). Ostracod ecological groups provided detailed insights on naturally stressful paleoenvironmental conditions. We show that “poor” to “moderate” PaleoEcoQs are recorded by biological indicators at reference conditions under fluctuations of chemical-physical parameters and organic matter enrichment. We emphasize the importance of a site-specific paleobiological approach, as significant differences in diversity occur even on a short spatial scale. This study illustrates that early to mid-Holocene sediment successions resulted to be appropriate for conservation paleobiological purposes, providing a high-resolution paleoecological record under the influence of the Holocene sea-level rise in analogy with the present-day global change.

show abstract

“…Ostreidae (oysters) are a family for which growth data are frequently needed. Indeed, information on growth rates and population dynamics of Ostrea edulis (European oyster, Linnaeus, 1758) are important for the conservation, restoration, and management of modern (Kraeuter et al 2007;Powell et al 2008;Harding et al 2010;Levinton et al 2013;Baggett et al 2015), and past populations (Rick and Lockwood 2013;Rick et al 2016Rick et al , 2017Kusnerik et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual Growth Patterns and Interspecimen Variability in Mg/Ca Records of Archaeological Ostrea edulis (European Oyster) from the Late Mesolithic Site of Conors Island

Hausmann¹,

Robson²,

Hunt

2019

Open Quaternary

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Annual growth patterns in marine mollusc shells are valuable indicators of the condition of marine ecology through time. In archaeological contexts, the mollusc's time of death (i.e. the last season of growth) is an indicator of human exploitation patterns throughout the year, enabling the reconstruction of when and how often gathering occurred as well as when sites were occupied. Both pieces of information, growth rate and season of death, are vital for understanding exploitation pressure(s) in the past, and building baselines for modern environmental policies that secure sustainable marine resources. Previously, these parameters have been determined by incremental growth-line or isotopic analyses, which are time consuming and often expensive techniques, thus restricting sample size and the overall robustness of palaeoecological interpretations. Here, we apply Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) to produce elemental maps (Mg/Ca) with the potential to trace and display growth patterns quickly, and at a reduced cost. We further compare the elemental maps with the results obtained from incremental growth-line analysis to provide a structural context for the geochemical data, and demonstrate the utility of an integrated methodological approach. Our pilot study was undertaken on 12 European oysters (Ostrea edulis, Linnaeus, 1758) from the Late Mesolithic shell midden at Conors Island, Co. Sligo in the Republic of Ireland. Our LIBS analysis enabled us to accurately and quickly determine repeating growth patterns, which were often in agreement with the annual growth increments visible through the microscopic analysis. Based on this comparative dataset, including structural and geochemical patterns, the Late Mesolithic site of Conors Island had been occupied throughout the year. Moreover, our analyses highlight the applicability of LIBS to determine prehistoric seasonality practices as well as biological age and growth at an improved rate and reduced cost than was previously achievable.

show abstract

Using the Fossil Record to Establish a Baseline and Recommendations for Oyster Mitigation in the Mid-Atlantic U.S.

Cited by 9 publications

References 74 publications

A conservation palaeobiological perspective on Chesapeake Bay oysters

A conservation palaeobiological perspective on Chesapeake Bay oysters

Conservation Paleobiology as a Tool to Define Reference Conditions in Naturally Stressed Transitional Settings: Micropaleontological Insights from the Holocene of the Po Coastal Plain (Italy)

Annual Growth Patterns and Interspecimen Variability in Mg/Ca Records of Archaeological Ostrea edulis (European Oyster) from the Late Mesolithic Site of Conors Island

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About