Feeding grounds for waders in the Bay of the Mont Saint-Michel (France): the Lanice conchilega reef serves as an oasis i
- PDF / 516,421 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 67 Downloads / 137 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Feeding grounds for waders in the Bay of the Mont Saint-Michel (France): the Lanice conchilega reef serves as an oasis in the tidal flats Bart De Smet • Laurent Godet • Je´roˆme Fournier Nicolas Desroy • Mikae¨l Jaffre´ • Magda Vincx • Marijn Rabaut
•
Received: 21 May 2012 / Accepted: 14 November 2012 / Published online: 30 November 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
Abstract The tube-building polychaete Lanice conchilega can form dense populations, often called reefs, which promote benthic community change and constitute feeding grounds for secondary consumers. The aim of this study was to quantify the role of the L. conchilega reef of the Bay of the Mont Saint-Michel (BMSM) for feeding waders, by combining macrobenthos data, bird counts and bird diet information. Wader densities in the reef were on average 46.6 times higher than in non-reef areas. According to faecal analyses, waders in the reef mainly selected the accompanying fauna and especially crustaceans. The attractiveness of
Communicated by S. Garthe. B. De Smet (&) M. Vincx M. Rabaut Department of Biology, Marine Biology Section, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281/S8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium e-mail: [email protected] L. Godet CNRS, UMR 6554 LETG-Nantes Ge´olittomer, Universite´ de Nantes, B.P. 81227, 44312 Nantes Cedex 3, France J. Fournier CNRS, UMR 7208 BOREA, Muse´um National d’Histoire Naturelle, 7 Rue Cuvier, CP 32, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France J. Fournier Station Marine de Dinard, USM 404 Muse´um National d’Histoire Naturelle, 38 Rue du Port Blanc, 35800 Dinard, France N. Desroy IFREMER Laboratoire Environnement et Ressources FBN, CRESCO, 38 Rue du Port Blanc, 35800 Dinard, France M. Jaffre´ Universite´ de Lille 1, UMR 8187 LOG, Station Marine de Wimereux, 28 Avenue Foch, 62930 Wimereux, France
the reef to feeding birds may be largely explained by the high abundance, richness and biomass of macrobenthic species in the reef compared with the rest of the BMSM.
Introduction Lanice conchilega is a widespread tubicolous polychaete that can form dense aggregations, considered biogenic reefs (Rabaut et al. 2009; Callaway et al. 2010). Above particular density thresholds, the structures of the tubes as well as the biological activity of the ‘‘engineer species’’ (Callaway 2006; Godet et al. 2008) generate specific sedimentological ‘‘structures’’ (Carey 1987; Feral 1989) and enhance the species diversity and abundance of the associated benthic macrofauna by stabilizing the sediments (Zu¨hlke 2001; Callaway 2006; Rabaut et al. 2007; Van Hoey et al. 2008). These reefs are also important feeding grounds for flatfishes, particularly the juveniles of Pleuronectes platessa (Rijnsdorp and Vingerhoed 2001; Rabaut et al. 2010). Lanice conchilega can be an important item in the diet of several waders (Goss-Custard and Jones 1976; Yates et al. 1993). Godet et al. (2009) showed that oystercatchers may significantly select L. conchilega reefs to feed in and that their spatial distribution can change greatly when these reefs disappear. B
Data Loading...
