MarineGEO Epifauna Protocol

Seagrass habitats support a diverse community of animals from tiny invertebrates to sea turtles and dugongs. Among the most abundant animals in seagrass habitats are the small, mobile invertebrates that live on or among seagrass leaves, referred to as mobile epifauna. The mobile epifauna of seagrass habitats are important to ecosystem processes because these animals are often highly productive and provide key food resources coastal fishes, both juveniles and adults. This document describes methods for sampling and characterizing seagrass mobile epifauna, specifically the abundance, taxonomic composition, and body size distributions of mobile epifaunal invertebrates associated with seagrass.

Epifaunal sampling and characterization are time-consuming, so MarineGEO requires only that seagrass mobile epifauna be sampled at least once from each site. Sampling should be done around the time of highest seagrass productivity at the site, usually early summer in temperate areas, coincident with annual sampling of other seagrass measurements. Most of these activities can be completed by two experienced field workers, but additional team members improve sampling quality and efficiency. This protocol provides guidelines on how to collect seagrass epifaunal data that are comparable to other sites and how to manage the data.

Following the protocol described below produces data on the following metrics of seagrass mobile epifauna assemblages:

• Mobile epifaunal abundance (g seagrass^-1)
• Mobile epifaunal biomass (g seagrass^-1)
• Mobile epifaunal taxonomic composition and diversity
• Mobile epifaunal body size distribution

Combining the data produced by this protocol with co-located data from the MarineGEO Seagrass Habitat Monitoring Protocol yields the following metrics:

• Mobile epifaunal abundance and biomass (m^-2)