See more from this Division: General Discipline Sessions
See more from this Session: Paleontology III - Paleoecology, Geochronology, and Education
Abstract:
Metrics of community equitability vary greatly when examined by methods of areal cover vs. simple counts of occurrences, and that occurrence data do not fully reflect the structure and organization of an epibiont community gradient, or epibiofacies. Patterns based on occurrence and areal coverage data are most similar in shallow depths (shallow euphotic zone). Differing reproductive strategies may be hypothesized based on comparison of areal coverage dominance with occurrence dominance. In particular, colonial epibionts (primarily bryozoans) with high occurrences may focus reproductive efforts on recruitment by spatting (many small, simple colonies), primarily sexual reproduction. Conversely, those with low numerical abundance (few colonies), but high areal cover on shells, when present, may exhibit higher colonial complexity, primarily asexual reproductive strategies, and greater overgrowth competitiveness. The distribution of such opportunistic vs. equilibrium reproductive strategies may vary along ecological stress gradients in light availability, oxygenation, and water turbulence.
See more from this Division: General Discipline Sessions
See more from this Session: Paleontology III - Paleoecology, Geochronology, and Education