Ecological Archives E096-169-A2
Max C. N. Castorani and Kevin A. Hovel. 2015. Invasive prey indirectly increase predation on their native competitors. Ecology 96:1621–1632. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-1538.1
Appendix B. Detailed description of artificial eelgrass plots.
In Experiments 2 and 3, we created plots that mimicked the habitat structure of eelgrass (Zostera marina) canopy. Plots were square PVC frames (13 × 13 × 7 cm in Experiment 2; 22 × 22 × 7 cm in Experiment 3) with plastic mesh bottoms (nominal mesh size = 1 mm) and filled with sieved beach sand. A grid (4 × 4) of monofilament provided attachment points for structural mimics of eelgrass shoots (16 plot–1 = 1,000 shoots m–2, representing a dense eelgrass patch for San Diego Bay (Reusch and Williams 1999)), which consisted of a pair of buoyant green polypropylene ribbon ‘leaves’ (5 mm width × 25 cm length; Virnstein and Curran 1986).
Literature Cited
Reusch, T. B. H., and S. L. Williams. 1999. Macrophyte canopy structure and the success of an invasive marine bivalve. Oikos 84:398–416.
Virnstein, R. W., and M. C. Curran. 1986. Colonization of artificial seagrass versus time and distance from source. Marine Ecology Progress Series 29:279–288.