An experimental approach for understanding the process of wood fragmentation by marine wood borers in shallow temperate waters

Nishimoto, Atsushi; Haga, Takuma; Asakura, Akira; Shirayama, Yoshihisa

doi:10.3354/meps11454

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The loss of wood mass at sea is actually the cumulative effect of biological degradation that depends on environmental factors such as oxygen content, temperature and salinity (Bienhold et al, 2013;Fors et al, 2014;Björdal and Nilsson, 2008;Fojutowski et al, 2014;Nishimoto et al, 2015). During this experiment, ranges of water temperature and salinity were rather high and narrow, matching temperature and salinity tolerances of most shipworm species occurring in European waters (Borges et al, 2014).…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Invertebrates, for instance, can be essential for the degradation activity of wood by decomposers (Bienhold et al, 2013). Marine environments support several wood borers which appear very effective in the disintegration of wood pieces (Björdal and Nilsson, 2008;Nishimoto et al, 2015), but once again, there is no general study on how fast wood breaks down under the activity of these organisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Wood decay at sea

Charles

Coston‐Guarini

Guarini

et al. 2016

Journal of Sea Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

International audienceThe oceans and seas receive coarse woody debris since the Devonian, but the kinetics of wood degradation remains one of many unanswered questions about the fate of driftwood in the marine environment. A simple gravimetric experiment was carried out at a monitoring station located at the exit of a steep, forested Mediterranean watershed in the Eastern Pyrenees. The objective was to describe and quantify, with standardized logs (in shape, structure and constitution), natural degradation of wood in the sea. Results show that the mass decrease of wood logs over time can be described by a sigmoidal curve. The primary process of wood decay observed at the monitoring station was due to the arrival and installation of wood-boring species that consumed more than half of the total wood mass in six months. Surprisingly, in a region where there is little remaining wood marine infrastructure, “shipworms”, i.e. xylophagous bivalves, are responsible for an important part of this wood decay. This suggests that these communities are maintained probably by a frequent supply of a large quantity of riparian wood entering the marine environment adjacent to the watershed. By exploring this direct link between terrestrial and marine ecosystems, our long term objective is to determine how these supplies of terrestrial organic carbon can sustain wood-based marine communities as it is observed in the Mediterranean Sea

show abstract

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wood decay at sea

Charles

Coston‐Guarini

Guarini

et al. 2016

Journal of Sea Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Determining the rate at which wood is consumed is a first step to determining the extent shipworms contribute to wood decay at sea. Some gross estimates of the impact of shipworms on wood destruction exist; these have been made from the assessment of the contribution of shipworm tubes to the cross-sectional area of trunks [18] or from mass loss of pre-weighed wood blocks [16,19]. According to these studies, shipworms could roughly remove 40-50% of the wood initially available.…”

Section: Extent Of Wood Consumption By Shipwormsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scientific interest in these animals has therefore been motivated primarily by the need to find ways to counteract the damage they inflict on maritime wooden structures such as bridges, piers, ships and shipwrecks [8]. Recent studies either deal in their majority with the strategies that enable these animals to digest and supplement a nutritionally imbalanced diet [9][10][11][12][13] or focus on the ecology of species which, by relying on a scarce and ephemeral food resource, are appealing as biological models to explore metacommunities of patchy habitats [3,[14][15][16]. However, quantifying the turnover rate of dead wood at sea by shipworm communities has yet to be estimated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This first estimate only partially reflects the full extent of wood consumption, as weight measurements of infested wood boards necessarily include the mass of the organisms themselves and the calcareous layer that lines the wall of the shipworms' tunnels. The weight of these combined parts is assumed to be small in comparison to that of wood itself [16,19] but a more precise estimate should be made, especially when wood boards are overcrowded by shipworms and knowing that density of mineral calcium carbonate is 6-7 times greater than that of most woods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

It’s what’s inside that counts: computer-aided tomography for evaluating the rate and extent of wood consumption by shipworms

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Experiments were done to investigate in situ colonization of pine wood blocks by marine wood borers at the mouth of a small mountain river in the foothills of the Eastern Pyrenees. Standardized blocks were recovered after remaining underwater for increasingly long durations, until the available resource was exhausted by the shipworms assemblage that developed. Computer-aided tomography (CT) was used for visualizing and quantifying biogenic structures into the wooden blocks. The biodiversity survey of the wood pieces colonized indicated that up to three species of shipworms shared the resource at the same time. The specific wood consumption rate of Nototeredo norvagica was estimated 185 mm 3 ind −1 day −1. The quantification of voids created by shipworm crowding indicated that total tunnelling represents, on average, 60% of the initial volume of a wood block, revising upward earlier estimates of wood destruction by 28%. CT analysis provides the quantitative measurements necessary to parameterize individual-based growth models linking wood consumption with the species diversity of shipworm assemblages.

show abstract

Contribution of fungal and invertebrate communities to wood decay in tropical terrestrial and aquatic habitats

Ferrer

Heath

Canam

et al. 2020

Ecology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wood is a major carbon input into aquatic ecosystems and is thought to decay slowly, yet surprisingly little terrestrial carbon accumulates in marine sediments. A better mechanistic understanding of how habitat conditions and decomposer communities influence wood decay processes along the river–estuary–ocean continuum can address this seeming paradox. We measured mass loss, wood element, and polymer concentrations, quantified invertebrate‐induced decay, and sequenced fungal communities associated with replicate sections of Guazuma branch wood submerged in freshwater, estuarine, and near‐shore marine habitats and placed on the soil surface in nearby terrestrial habitats in three watersheds in the tropical eastern Pacific. Over 15 months, we found that wood decayed at similar rates in estuarine, marine, and terrestrial sites, reflecting the combined activity of invertebrate and microbial decomposers. In contrast, in the absence of shipworms (Teredinidae), which accounted for ~40% of wood mass loss in the estuarine habitats, decay proceeded more slowly in freshwater. Over the experiment, wood element chemistry diverged among freshwater, estuarine, and marine habitats, due to differences in both nutrient losses (e.g., potassium and phosphorus) and gains (e.g., calcium and aluminum) through decay. Similarly, we observed changes in wood polymer content, with the highest losses of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin moieties in the marine habitat. Aquatic fungal communities were strongly dominated by ascomycetes (88–99% of taxa), compared to terrestrial communities (55% ascomycetes). Large differences in fungal diversity were also observed across habitats with threefold higher richness in terrestrial than freshwater habitats and twofold higher diversity in freshwater than estuarine/marine habitats. Divergent decay trajectories across habitats were associated with widespread order‐level differences in fungal composition, with distinct communities found in freshwater, estuarine and marine habitats. However, few individual taxa that were significantly associated with mass loss were broadly distributed, suggesting a high level of functional redundancy. The rapid processing of wood entering tropical rivers by microbes and invertebrates, comparable to that on land, indicates that estuaries and coastal oceans are hotspots not just for the processing of particulate and dissolved organic carbon, but also for woody debris and for the breakdown of lignin, the most recalcitrant polymer in plant tissue.

show abstract

An experimental approach for understanding the process of wood fragmentation by marine wood borers in shallow temperate waters

Cited by 17 publications

References 49 publications

Wood decay at sea

Wood decay at sea

It’s what’s inside that counts: computer-aided tomography for evaluating the rate and extent of wood consumption by shipworms

Contribution of fungal and invertebrate communities to wood decay in tropical terrestrial and aquatic habitats

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About