Document of bibliographic reference 282309

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

The critical scale of small-scale spatial variation in ecological patterns and processes in intertidal macrobenthic seagrass assemblages

Abstract

Earlier work on benthic faunal assemblages in intertidal seagrass beds has shown maximal structural variation at spatial scales <150 m. To examine more closely spatial variation of species assemblages within this range, numbers of target taxa in the beds on North Stradbroke Island, Moreton Bay, Australia, were sampled at nested spatial scales of 0.5, 5, 30 and 90 m at two localities 900 m apart. Variance components were largest at the smallest scales, that at 0.5 m comprising 55% of the total and that at 5 m 13%. Individual species were patchily dispersed and their assemblages were randomly structured at all studied spatial scales. Although assemblage composition differed significantly between the two localities, overall faunal abundance and species richness were relatively uniform across the whole study area. These seagrass beds show little turn-over of dominant species and little evidence of niche partitioning through space over scales of <1 km. In this they contrast markedly with the equivalent intertidal dwarf-eelgrass beds of Knysna in South Africa that form a high turn-over, strongly structured, deterministic system.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000300805100012

Bibliographic citation

Barnes, R.S.K.; Ellwood, M.D.F. (2012). The critical scale of small-scale spatial variation in ecological patterns and processes in intertidal macrobenthic seagrass assemblages. Est., Coast. and Shelf Sci. 98: 119-125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2011.12.014

Topic

Marine

Is peer reviewed

true