Fish, Macroinvertebrate and Epifaunal Communities in Shallow Coastal Lagoons with Varying Seagrass Cover of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

Functional implications of changes in seagrass species composition in two shallow coastal lagoons

“…This change could have influenced the overall food web within the lagoon, as infaunal and epifaunal communities often differ be tween seagrass beds and adjacent bare sediments (Orth et al 1984, FerreroVicente et al 2011). However, a separate study comparing fish, macro invertebrate, and epifaunal communities found little difference between Kees Bayou, State Park, and 4 other nearby lagoons with varying levels of seagrass cover (McDonald et al 2016). This could be attributed to habitat redundancy between seagrass beds and fringing marshes or to the shallow depth of these lagoons, which limits access for large predators (McDonald et al 2016).…”

“…However, a separate study comparing fish, macro invertebrate, and epifaunal communities found little difference between Kees Bayou, State Park, and 4 other nearby lagoons with varying levels of seagrass cover (McDonald et al 2016). This could be attributed to habitat redundancy between seagrass beds and fringing marshes or to the shallow depth of these lagoons, which limits access for large predators (McDonald et al 2016). , BGPP, or BR.…”

Understanding the Long-Term Evolution of the Coupled Natural-Human Coastal System: The Future of the U.S. Gulf Coast

“…Part of effective management is strategic natural resource conservation. Coastal development will inevitably cause some loss of ecosystem function, but can be minimized by conserving ecosystem functional hot spots that can help regenerate resources where they have been lost or grow those resources somewhere else in the developed coastal environment (McDonald et al, 2016b). Functional hot spots can regenerate or implant resources through larval production and dispersal (Kim et al, 2010), export of plant seeds that will subsequently settle (Kendall et al, 2004), and migration of adult individuals that can then reproduce in the colonized areas (Sala et al, 2002).…”

“…Functional hot spots can regenerate or implant resources through larval production and dispersal (Kim et al, 2010), export of plant seeds that will subsequently settle (Kendall et al, 2004), and migration of adult individuals that can then reproduce in the colonized areas (Sala et al, 2002). For instance, a fringing marsh buffer may preserve many of the ecosystem services present in the pre-development environment, such as filtering runoff (e.g., Sparks et al, 2015), providing habitat for juvenile fish (Moody et al, 2013;McDonald et al, 2016b) and attenuating wave energy to reduce the impacts of storm surge on nearby communities (Roland and Douglas, 2005). The preservation and use of marsh buffers in green and hybrid infrastructure approaches has recently gained interest (Sutton-Grier et al, 2015 ways that make use of nature's ecosystem services and allow the natural system to adjust to changes in changing conditions (for example, by allowing marsh buffers to shift through time) is a main tenant of the emerging innovative "Build with Nature" approach (e.g., de Vriend et al, 2015).…”

“…Although these natural environmental gradients strongly affect the composition, structure, and species richness of coastal ecosystems, the impacts of these gradients on ecosystem function and resilience are not well understood. For instance, understanding the functional changes from the phytoplanktondominated western Gulf to the macrophyte-dominated eastern Gulf (Anton et al, 2011;McDonald et al, 2016b) is far from complete. While the knowledge of compositional and structural shifts in Gulf Coast ecosystems is detailed, it is not well-known how these shifts translate into functional changes.…”