Evaluating the Role of Habitat Complexity in Structuring Seagrass Communities
type: CreativeWork
description: Biogenic coastal habitats such as salt marshes, seagrasses, and oyster reefs, support diverse faunal communities and can serve as nursery areas by enhancing the abundance, growth, and survival of juvenile fish and crustaceans. The structure and complexity of these biogenic habitats can strongly influence the composition of marine faunal communities and contribute to their roles as nursery areas. It is imperative to understand how nursery areas are defined in the ecological literature as these definitions are applied to nursery area management across the United States. Further, the relative importance of how habitat structural attributes, which are influenced by abiotic and biotic factors, shape faunal communities within these nursery areas is critical to understand these important coastal ecosystems. My dissertation focuses on (1) how nursery frameworks in the ecological literature have evolved and how these frameworks are applied to state management of nursery areas; (2) how abiotic and biotic factors influence the restoration success and complexity of seagrass meadows; and (3) how, in turn, this habitat complexity influences faunal community composition and structure. For my first chapter, I found six overarching frameworks to define and delineate nursery areas in the ecological literature: measures of juvenile abundance and vital rates, habitat characteristics, seascape connectivity, populations fitness and contribution to adult biomass, and persistence. Of the 23 coastal states, only seven explicitly protect nursery areas and of these seven states, the aforementioned frameworks are not equally applied. Gathering and analyzing data necessary to integrate higher-order metrics (e.g., connectivity and biomass contribution) to designate nurseries will require significant research investment and greater collaboration between ecologists and fisheries scientists. My second chapter combines two years of observational seagrass and faunal surveys with a habitat preference …
abstract: Biogenic coastal habitats such as salt marshes, seagrasses, and oyster reefs, support diverse faunal communities and can serve as nursery areas by enhancing the abundance, growth, and survival of juvenile fish and crustaceans. The structure and complexity of these biogenic habitats can strongly influence the composition of marine faunal communities and contribute to their roles as nursery areas. It is imperative to understand how nursery areas are defined in the ecological literature as these definitions are applied to nursery area management across the United States. Further, the relative importance of how habitat structural attributes, which are influenced by abiotic and biotic factors, shape faunal communities within these nursery areas is critical to understand these important coastal ecosystems. My dissertation focuses on (1) how nursery frameworks in the ecological literature have evolved and how these frameworks are applied to state management of nursery areas; (2) how abiotic and biotic factors influence the restoration success and complexity of seagrass meadows; and (3) how, in turn, this habitat complexity influences faunal community composition and structure. For my first chapter, I found six overarching frameworks to define and delineate nursery areas in the ecological literature: measures of juvenile abundance and vital rates, habitat characteristics, seascape connectivity, populations fitness and contribution to adult biomass, and persistence. Of the 23 coastal states, only seven explicitly protect nursery areas and of these seven states, the aforementioned frameworks are not equally applied. Gathering and analyzing data necessary to integrate higher-order metrics (e.g., connectivity and biomass contribution) to designate nurseries will require significant research investment and greater collaboration between ecologists and fisheries scientists. My second chapter combines two years of observational seagrass and faunal surveys with a habitat preference …
author: Trackenberg, Stacy N
language: en
keywords: Habitat Provisioning, Community Ecology
date published: 2023-07-18
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:13:39Z
provider: East Carolina University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: East Carolina University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/10342/13172