Crab influences on the export of plant detritus from salt marshes and mangroves: A review

JORGE LUIS CEFERINO GUTIERREZ

Ecosystem Ecology Research Trends

Nova Science Publishers

Lugar: Hauppauge, NY; Año: 2008; p. 327 - 344

While crabs occur in perhaps most salt-marshes and mangroves worldwide, they are rarely considered in studies dealing with tidal fluxes of plant detritus from these coastal wetlands to adjacent waters. However, crabs can affect the production, availability and tidal transport of plant detritus in a variety ways. This includes controls via both assimilatory-dissimilatory mechanisms (e.g., herbivory, detritivory, seed and propagule consumption) and non assimilatory, non dissimilatory environmental modification (i.e., physical ecosystem engineering; e.g., sediment oxygenation via burrows, detritus excavation and burial, detritus trapping into burrows). Given the high densities and activity rates shown by many crab species, their effects on the export of plant detritus are expected to be important relative to overall ecosystem production. Therefore, the predictive capacity of models dealing with detritus export by salt marshes and mangroves is likely to be enhanced by considering crab influences.