Benthic macrofaunal structure and secondary production in tropical estuaries on the Eastern Marine Ecoregion of Brazil
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecosystem Science, Biological Oceanography
- Keywords
- Estuaries, Benthic ecology, Secondary production, Mangroves, Macrofauna, Eastern Brazil, Tidal flats
- Copyright
- © 2017 Bissoli et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Benthic macrofaunal structure and secondary production in tropical estuaries on the Eastern Marine Ecoregion of Brazil. PeerJ Preprints 5:e3419v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.3419v1
Abstract
Estuaries are highly productive and support diverse benthic assemblages, but few estimates of benthic production are available for most ecosystems. In tropical estuaries mangroves and tidal flats are typical habitats with high spatial heterogeneity of benthic macrofaunal assemblages. However, accessing differences and similarities of benthic assemblages within estuarine habitats and between regional ecosystems may provide scientific support to management of those ecosystems. Here we studied three tropical estuaries in the Eastern Marine Ecoregion of Brazil to assess the spatial variability of benthic assemblages from vegetated (mangroves) and unvegetated (tidal flats) habitats. A nested sampling design was used to determine spatial scales of variability in benthic macrofaunal density, biomass and secondary production. Habitat differences in benthic assemblage composition, biomass, density and secondary production were significant, but also varied between estuaries. Macrofaunal secondary production differed between estuaries and between tidal flat and mangrove habitats, and those differences were related to the composition of benthic assemblages. High benthic production were associated with tidal flats in estuaries with presumable less human impacts, although benthic assemblages from mangrove sediments had similar production irrespective of human disturbances. Given variable levels of human impacts and predicted climate change effects on tropical estuarine assemblages in Eastern Brazil, our data support the use of benthic secondary production to address long-term changes and improved management of estuaries in Eastern Brazil.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
raw data
Raw data including environmental and biological datasets.
Appendix figures and tables
Appendix figures and tables