Meeting Abstract
Woodin (1974) presented one of the first studies that employed cages to examine processes organizing faunal community structure in marine soft sediments. Subsequently, Woodin (1978, 1981) highlighted how refuges provided by biogenic structure contributed to enhanced abundance of infaunal taxa. Combined, these results alerted ecologists to a new domain of biological interactions among macroinfaunal organisms and the utility of manipulative field experiments. Here I review selected work conducted in my laboratory that expands upon the framework found in these papers. Field experiments from mainly a subtropical setting have revealed that: 1) abundance of not only macrofaunal but meiofaunal-size organisms is influenced by biogenic structure within sediments; 2)seagrass shoot structure acts similarly to large tube-building polychaetes by modifying sediments and providing sites of attachment and refugia for meiofaunal and macrofaunal taxa; and 3)below-ground structure of rhizophytic algae and seagrass impacts densities of infaunal organisms although responses are highly species specific. The subtidal soft sediments along the west coast of Florida contain a diverse assemblage of both fauna and flora that remains relatively understudied but poised for new efforts to address questions concerning biological interactions, community assembly, and ecosystem functioning, embracing ideas introduced more than 40 years ago.
