Meeting Abstract
Infaunal organisms are critical to aquatic food webs and are consumed by many species, including threatened/endangered wading birds and commercially important fishes and crabs. We predicted that infauna would be good indicator taxa to document the transition from dead to living (restored) intertidal oyster reefs and highly eroded to stable shorelines after deploying oyster shell, marshgrass and mangroves. All research was conducted in Mosquito Lagoon, northern Indian River Lagoon system along the east coast of central Florida. Six replicate samples were collected from 12 intertidal oyster reef locations (4 dead control reefs, 4 live control, and 4 restored), and 7 eroding shoreline locations (3 control sites, 4 restored sites). Samples were collected 1-week pre-restoration and 1 week, 1 month, 3 months and then quarterly post-restoration. Once collected in cores and sieved to retain organisms ranging from 2.0 to 0.5 mm, stained and preserved infaunal organisms were sorted out from the sediment in the samples and identified down to the lowest possible taxonomic level. Species density, biomass, and the species diversity data were collected. Results on oyster reefs to date suggest that live reefs have highest species density followed by restored reefs with dead reefs having densities close to zero. Likewise, live oyster reefs contained the largest infaunal organisms, especially among the polychaetes. Living shoreline locations showed a similar trend; stabilized shorelines had higher species density and larger infaunal organisms than the unstabilized sites. In summary, our data document that oyster restoration and shoreline stabilization projects positively impact numerous infaunal species and their associated food webs.
