Patterns of unsuccessful shell‐crushing predation along a tidal gradient in two geographically separated salt marshes

Abstract

AbstractGradients in salt marsh ecosystems that result from reduced tidal inundation time in the high marsh offer an opportunity to assess the importance of predation as a selective agent (indexed by the time‐averaged record of unsuccessful predation, which integrates potentially confounding short‐term – inter‐seasonal and inter‐annual – fluctuations in predation pressure). Spatial patterns in selection pressure are expected to decrease landward from the seaward edge of the marsh. Interaction between shell‐breaking predators and their snail prey, Littoraria irrorata, however, generated a pattern in the frequency of sublethal injury (shell repair), standardized for snail size, that did not follow this simple, single‐variable prediction of decreasing repair frequencies with distance from the seaward edge of the marsh, based on inundation time alone. Patterns of repair frequency increased landward from the seaward edge of the marsh, only declining as predicted after a zone of dense stands of salt marsh grass. The interaction of tidal inundation time and primary habitat structure (e.g. physical vegetative barriers to dispersion of predators into the marsh) is hypothesized to shape selection gradients in salt marshes, as inferred from the record of unsuccessful predation.