Meeting Abstract

S5.1  Tuesday, Jan. 5  Ecology of injury and regeneration in marine benthic invertebrates: from individuals to ecosystems LINDSAY, S.M.; University of Maine, Orono slindsay@maine.edu

Many marine invertebrates are able to regenerate lost tissue following injury, but regeneration can come at a cost to individuals in terms of reproduction, behavior and physiological condition, and can have effects that reach beyond the individual to impact populations, communities and ecosystems. For example, removal and subsequent regeneration of clam siphons, polychaete segments, and brittlestar arms can represent significant energetic input to higher trophic levels. In marine soft-sediment habitats, injury changes infaunal bioturbation rates and thus secondarily influences sediment-mediated competition, adult-larval interactions and recruitment success. The importance of injury and regeneration as factors affecting the ecology of marine invertebrate communities depends on the frequency of injury, as well as individual capacity for and speed of regeneration. A key question to answer is “How frequently are marine benthic invertebrates injured?”. I will review sources and frequency of injury in a variety of marine invertebrates from different benthic habitats, discuss challenges and approaches for accurately determining injury rates in the field, consider evidence for species-specific and geographic variation in injury rates, and present examples of indirect effects of injury on marine invertebrates to illustrate the ways that injury can modify larger scale ecological patterns and processes.