Mudflat Ecosystem Engineers and Services

Abstract

Ecosystem engineers play a fundamental role in the creation, maintenance and transformation of habitats in tidal flats. Highly diverse in terms of size, phylogeny, and effect on their environment, they can facilitate or hinder a number of organisms, but generally have a positive influence on both the abundance and the diversity of mudflat organisms. The magnitude of the engineering effect is, however, largely dependent on the biotic and abiotic environment of the engineer. In particular, stressful habitats such as mudflats host a large number of ecosystem engineers; understanding interactions between them, and how they vary with abiotic variables, is therefore of crucial importance, to evaluate how ecosystem engineers affect benthic communities and ecosystem functioning. Such understanding will also help human populations which benefit from mudflat organisms and/or functioning (i.e. which derive ecosystem services from them), to maintain and manage the sustainably of tidal flats, in a way which maintains human health and well-being.