Abstract
The benthic microbial food web can be responsible for a large proportion of benthic carbon cycling yet there are few data on the trophic interactions between this food web and macrobenthos. A large-scale field experiment was conducted to investigate effects of eliminating the polychaete Arenicola marina on benthic microbes (prokaryotes, heterotrophic and autotrophic protists) and metazoan meiofauna in a marine intertidal flat of the North Sea, Germany. Over a period of 2 years, quantity and composition of micro- and meiobenthos from unmanipulated sites were compared to those from sites deplete of lugworms. These grazer treatments were cross-classified with different sediment characteristics (low- and mid-intertidal areas). Lugworm removal resulted in an initial increase in abundance of prokaryotes and nanoflagellates, which became less pronounced in the second year. Ciliates were not affected quantitatively, but in the absence of lugworms, diversity and the proportion of carnivorous forms increased. Meiobenthos (nematodes, ostracods and copepods) were affected only moderately. The observed changes are probably due to a combination of release from grazing/predation pressure, changes in the species composition of higher trophic levels (namely large polychaetes) and altered environmental conditions (such as depth of the oxygenated layer and sediment grain size). Spatial differences between sites of different tidal exposure/grain size appeared to be as large as temporal differences during the 2 years following the manipulation of the system. We conclude that in intertidal sediments, indirect effects due to habitat transformation are as important as direct biological interactions (grazing pressure and competition) for the dynamics of the benthic microbial food web.
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Acknowledgments
This work received financial support from the Knowledge Innovation Program of CAS (KZCX2-YW-417), the German Research Community (DFG BE 2279/3-1), the National Science Foundation of China (40706047 and 40576072) and the `100 Talents Project’ of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We thank V. Smetacek, U. Bathmann (both AWI) and A. Lametschwandtner (University of Salzburg) for providing general support at the respective institutions. The help of our colleagues B. Auer, J. Matthiessen, M. Prast and K. Xu with various aspects of the study is gratefully acknowledged. We thank the associate editor Dr. P. Kraufvelin and three anonymous referees for helpful comments on the manuscript.
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Lei, Y., Stumm, K., Volkenborn, N. et al. Impact of Arenicola marina (Polychaeta) on the microbial assemblages and meiobenthos in a marine intertidal flat. Mar Biol 157, 1271–1282 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-010-1407-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-010-1407-7