MEPS 424:119-132 (2011)  -  DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps08960

ABSTRACT: Relationships between habitat complexity and biodiversity are a cornerstone of ecology. On many rocky shores, the cryptic macrofauna that live in the biogenic habitat created by larger organisms adds considerably to biodiversity. Algal turfs are commonly considered to facilitate high species richness of resident organisms by moderating the physically stressful characteristics of the rocky shore. We conducted a multi-scale study to describe scales of patchiness within sites and define the strength of local habitat and broader environmental variables on infaunal turf communities. Species richness contributed by sampling turf dwelling infauna increased our estimates of rocky shore diversity by >100% compared to traditional visual quadrat sampling. Generalised linear models of the species density and abundance of infaunal turf organisms and canonical correspondence analysis of community structure did not indicate a strong role for algal turf habitat complexity. Multivariate partitioning was used to assess the importance of processes operating on site and regional scales in influencing the infaunal turf community. The analysis demonstrated the importance of cross-scale relationships and high levels of unexplained variation. Analysis of biological traits demonstrated widely dispersing species were strongly influenced by broad-scale environmental factors. Feeding traits indicated that the infaunal turf community was dominated by species capable of switching strategies between autotrophic and detrital based foodwebs, with the exception of suspension feeding species. Overall, and contrary to previous studies, our results indicate wide niches for infaunal turf species and weak relationships between the infaunal community and turf habitat characteristics. Spatial variation in turf habitat characteristics was not the main driver of spatial variation in turf-dwelling organisms, implying that the habitat variability we observed was not strongly influencing physical stresses, such as temperature and wave disturbance.

KEY WORDS: Algal turf · Infauna · Diversity–habitat relationships · Biological traits · Spatial scale · Mediterranean Sea