Abstract
ABSTRACT By comparing censuses of living, shallow marine molluscan communities with their associated time-averaged dead remains, we gain an understanding of compositional changes that have taken place through time. Our ability to diagnose anthropogenic or natural environmental changes based on dissimilarities between life and death assemblages, however, is contingent on the existence of a time lag between changes in the life assemblage and their manifestations in the time-averaged death assemblage (taphonomic inertia). Here, we utilized a unique set of multiyear census records of live and dead marine mollusks from Smuggler's Cove, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands to determine the magnitude of taphonomic inertia in this setting. We found that over a more than three-decade interval from 1980 to 2012, both the life and death assemblage composition varied significantly. Most of this variation was driven by shifting rank orders of several key species, including: Cerithium litteratum, Modulus modulus, and lucinid...
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