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Effects of urbanization on attributes and associated fauna of mussel beds

Ana Catarina Torres1*, Marcos Rubal1, Ricardo Costa-Garcia2, Isabel Sousa-Pinto1 and Puri Veiga1
  • 1 Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Biologia, Portugal
  • 2 Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas Abel Salazar (ICBAS), Universidade do Porto, Portugal

Ecosystem engineers are organisms that, by their behaviour and/or physical form, can directly or indirectly control the resources available to other species (Jones et al., 1994, 1997). Mussels aggregations are considered as ecosystem engineers, creating unique and very diverse habitats (Borthagaray and Carranza, 2007; Buchsbaum et al., 2009). In the intertidal zone of northern Portugal, mussel beds of the species Mytilus galloprovincialis Lamarck, 1819, are among the most abundant organisms (Boaventura et al., 2002). However, mussel beds are subjected to various anthropogenic disturbances, such as increasing urbanization (Morley, 2007; McKinney, 2008). Urbanization can directly eliminate some species through the indiscriminate harvesting or trampling of animals, through the contamination and/or due to the construction of structures that causes the fragmentation of habitats (Chapmam, 2003). In this perspective, the objective of this study was to explore how urbanization affects the attributes of M. galloprovincialis and its associated fauna. For this study, four rocky shores were selected based on their level of urbanization - two urban and two not-urban. In each shore, two sites were selected and, in each site, five samples of mussels were collected to explore potential impacts of urbanization. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to test the effect of urbanization on the total number, size and condition index of mussels and on the total number of individuals, taxa number, Shannon-Winner index and the structure of their associated assemblages. Results concerning the mussel attributes revealed that only the size frequency showed significant differences between the urban and not-urban shores. In the urban shores, the mussels with larger size were more frequent than in the not-urban shores. Regarding mussel-associated fauna, both the number of individuals and the structure of the assemblage presented significant differences between both conditions. In not-urban shores animals were more abundant. Overall, these results highlighted the impacts of increasing urbanization in M. galloprovincialis, revealing that, although in urban shores the size frequency of this species was higher, the abundance of their associated fauna was reduced compared to not-urban shores.

Acknowledgements

This research was partially financially supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, through the project ECOS nº 30181. During this study, A.C.T. (SFRH/BD/114935/2016) was supported by PhD grant and M.R. (SFRH/BDP/104225/2014) and P.V. (SFRH/BPD/81582/2011) by postdoctoral grants awarded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.

References

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Keywords: ecosystem engineers, mytilus galloprovincialis, Urbanization, attributes of mussels, Epifaunal assemblages

Conference: IMMR'18 | International Meeting on Marine Research 2018, Peniche, Portugal, 5 Jul - 6 Jul, 2018.

Presentation Type: Oral Presentation

Topic: Biodiversity, Conservation and Coastal Management

Citation: Torres A, Rubal M, Costa-Garcia R, Sousa-Pinto I and Veiga P (2019). Effects of urbanization on attributes and associated fauna of mussel beds. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: IMMR'18 | International Meeting on Marine Research 2018. doi: 10.3389/conf.FMARS.2018.06.00014

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Received: 28 Apr 2018; Published Online: 07 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Ana Catarina Torres, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Biologia, Porto, Portugal, a_catarina_torres@hotmail.com