No abstract

We conducted a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) study using larval digeneans infecting the California horn snail, Cerithidea californica, to evaluate the success of an ecological restoration project at Carpinteria Salt Marsh in California, USA. Digenean trematodes are parasites with complex life cycles requiring birds and other vertebrates as final hosts. We tested two hypotheses for prevalence and species richness of larval trematodes in C. californica: (1) prior to the restoration, sites to be restored would have lower trematode prevalence and species richness relative to unimpacted control sites, and (2) that these differences would diminish after restoration. The sites to be restored were initially degraded for trematode species. They had a mean trematode prevalence (12%) and species richness (4.5 species) that were lower than control sites (28% trematode prevalence and 7 species). Despite the differences in prevalence, the proportional representation of each trematode species in the total community was similar between sites to be restored and control sites. Over the six years following restoration, trematode prevalence nearly quadrupled at restored sites (43%) while the prevalence at control sites (26%) remained unchanged. In addition, species richness at restored sites doubled (9 species), while species richness at the control sites (7.8 species) did not change. Immediately after restoration, the relative abundance of trematode species using fishes as second intermediate hosts declined while those using molluscs as second intermediate hosts increased. Trematode communities at restored and control sites gradually returned to being similar. We interpret the increase in trematode prevalence and species richness at restored sites to be a direct consequence of changes in bird use of the restored habitat. This study demonstrates a new comparative technique for assessing wetlands, and while it does not supplant biotic surveys, it informs such taxonomic lists. Most importantly, it provides a synthetic quantification of the linkages among species in wetland food webs.

Measuring biodiversity is difficult. This has led to efforts to seek taxa whose species richness correlates with the species richness of other taxa. Such indicator taxa could then reduce the time and cost of assessing the biodiversity of the more extensive community. The search for species richness correlations has yielded mixed results, however. This may be primarily because of the lack of functional relationships between the taxa studied. Trematode parasites are highly promising bioindicators. Diverse assemblages of larval trematode parasites are easily sampled in intermediate host snails. Through their life cycles these parasites are functionally coupled with the surrounding free-living diversity of vertebrate and invertebrate animals. It has been shown that larval trematodes in snails correlate positively with bird diversity and abundance. Here, we explore whether trematodes also correlate with standard measures of fishes, and large and small benthos, for 32 sites in three wetlands. We found associations between trematodes and benthic communities that were not consistent across wetlands. The associations were, however, consistently positive for large benthic species richness and density. Some of the contrasting associations between trematode and benthos may be explained by negative associations between large and small benthos. We found no associations with fish communities (probably because of the inadequacy of standard "snapshot" sampling methods for highly mobile fishes). The results support further exploration of trematodes as bioindicators of diversity and abundance of animal communities.

This data set presents food webs for three North American Pacific coast estuaries and a ''Metaweb'' composed of the species/stages compiled from all three estuaries. The webs have four noteworthy attributes: (1) parasites (infectious agents), (2) body-size information, (3) biomass information, and (4) ontogenetic stages of many animals with complex life cycles. The estuaries are Carpinteria Salt Marsh, California (CSM); Estero de Punta