Are Crabs Killing the Nation's Salt Marshes?

Salt marshes

Salt marshes are unique ecosystems that are brimming with diversity, and provide crucial shelter to coastal communities.

Long-term biological effects of petroleum residues on fiddler crabs in salt marshes.

In September 1969, the Florida barge spilled 700,000L of No. 2 fuel oil into the salt marsh sediments of Wild Harbor (Buzzards Bay, MA). Today the aboveground environment appears unaffected, but a substantial amount of moderately degraded petroleum still remains 8-20cm below the surface. The salt marsh fiddler crabs, Uca pugnax, burrow into the sediments at depths of 5-25cm, and are chronically...

Local and geographic variation in grazing intensity by herbivorous crabs in SW Atlantic salt marshes

Coupling experiments at small spatial scales with large-scale surveys can help to generalize experimental results across large spatial scales. The goal of the present study was to evaluate patterns of crab herbivory within and, at a larger scale, between many southwestern (SW) Atlantic salt marshes. Hence, we conducted experiments in an Argentinean salt marsh to elucidate the effects of crab Ch...

Die-Off of Southern U.S. Salt Marshes

Uncertain future of New England salt marshes

Salt marsh plant communities have long been envisioned as dynamic, resilient systems that quickly recover from human impacts and natural disturbances. But are salt marshes sufficiently resilient to withstand the escalating intensity and scale of human impacts in coastal environments? In this study we examined the independent and interactive effects of emerging threats to New England salt marshe...