The Seagrass Effect Turned Upside Down Changes the Prospective of Sea Urchin Survival and Landscape Implications.

ABSTRACT: Habitat structure plays an important mediating role in predator-prey interactions. However the effects are strongly dependent on regional predator pools, which can drive predation risk in habitats with very similar structure in opposite directions. In the Mediterranean Sea predation on juvenile sea urchins is commonly known to be regulated by seagrass structure. In this study we test whether the possibility for juvenile Paracentrotus lividus to be predated changes in relation to the fragmentation of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica (four habitat classes: continuous, low-fragmentation, high-fragmentation and rocks), and to the spatial arrangement of such habitat classes at a landscape scale. Sea urchin predation risk was measured in a 20-day field experiment on tethered individuals placed in

SUBMITTER: Farina S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5082627 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature