Can food-web interactions explain the structure of eelgrass communities in the field?
Douglass, James*,1, France, Kristin1, Duffy, James1, 1 School of Marine Science and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, Virginia, USA ABSTRACT- Many factors, including hydrography, propagule supply, and food web interactions, can influence community development in seagrass beds, with consequences for the health and productivity of the grass itself. Historically, seagrass ecology has emphasized the important role of bottom-up forcing (light, nutrients, physics). A growing body of evidence, primarily from lab and mesocosm experiments, suggests that consumers also play important roles in the structure and functioning of seagrass ecosystems. Yet the importance of these factors has been difficult to evaluate in the field. In an initial attempt to do so, we sampled six Chesapeake Bay eelgrass beds in the fall of 2003 to assess the extent of spatial variation in epiphyte biomass, mobile epifaunal assemblages, and small predators. Two of the sites also have been sampled app
