Stage-structured interactions between seasonal and permanent residents of an estuarine nekton community.

Abstract

Estuarine assemblages of fishes and natant decapod crustaceans (i.e. nekton) comprise both permanent resident species and juveniles of coastal marine species that use estuaries primarily as nurseries. In an attempt to understand how the young of marine species successfully invade communities of permanent estuarine residents we studied potential interactions between two of the most abundant decapod crustaceans in nekton assemblages of the southeastern United States. Three years of quantitative samples from an intertidal marsh on Sapelo Island, Georgia showed that densities of the resident daggerblade grass shrimp Palaemonetes pugio were reduced during the time that juvenile white shrimp Penaeus setiferus used the estuary as a nursery. Results of a field enclosure experiment showed that white shrimp had no significant lethal or sublethal effects on adult grass shrimp. However, they did reduce survival of both juvenile and larval grass shrimp in laboratory experiments, suggesting the potential importance of a stage-dependent predatorprey interaction between the two shrimp species. The mortality rate of young grass shrimp in the presence of white shrimp was unaffected by grass shrimp density, but larvae (2.6-3.0 mm) suffered higher mortalities than did juveniles (5.0-15.0 mm). We suggest that the vulnerability of grass shrimp to predation by white shrimp is related to their molting cycle. The 'window of vulnerability' opens more often for younger grass shrimp because they molt more frequently. When combined with losses due to other predators and competitors, the impact of early white shrimp cohorts on grass shrimp larvae and juveniles may prevent the resident species from maintaining its population at high densities, thereby freeing resources in the nursery for subsequent cohorts of juvenile white shrimp.