Resource Quantity Affects Benthic Microbial Community Structure and Growth Efficiency in a Temperate Intertidal Mudflat

Resource Quantity Affects Benthic Microbial Community Structure and Growth Efficiency in a Temperate Intertidal Mudflat

Estuaries cover <1% of marine habitats, but the carbon dioxide (CO(2)) effluxes from these net heterotrophic systems contribute significantly to the global carbon cycle. Anthropogenic eutrophication of estuarine waterways increases the supply of labile substrates to the underlying sediments. How such changes affect the form and functioning of the resident microbial communities remains unclear. ...

Microbial interactions in marine water amended by eroded benthic biofilm: A case study from an intertidal mudflat

In shallow macrotidal ecosystems with large intertidal mudflats, the sediment-water coupling plays a crucial role in structuring the pelagic microbial food web functioning, since inorganic and organic matter and microbial components (viruses and microbes) of the microphytobenthic biofilm can be suspended toward the water column. Two experimental bioassays were conducted in March and July 2008 t...

Benthic Invertebrate Community Structure

Fundamental to the scientific method is the use of controls or control conditions against which results obtained under test conditions are compared. In field studies, all variables cannot be controlled and replicates cannot be randomly assigned to treatments, so an attempt is made to choose test and control conditions (often represented by different sites) that are as similar as possible; the v...

Carbon and nitrogen cycling on intertidal mudflats of a temperate Australian estuary. I. Benthic metabolism

The light and dark inundated fluxes of O2 and total CO2 (TCO2), as well as the concentrations of chlorophyll a and phaeopigments, were measured (ex situ) on the upper and lower portions of 2 intertidal mudflats—1 in the upper Huon Estuary (salinity 4 to 32) and 1 in a marine side-arm of the estuary (salinity 17 to 34)—over 4 seasons. Dark-exposed fluxes of O2 and CO2 were also measured on the u...

Examining how landscapes influence benthic community assemblages in seagrass and mudflat habitats in southern Maine