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Vegetation in shallow coastal marine systems increases habitat complexity and attracts epibenthic fauna. However, these areas are often subjected to dynamic changes such as eutrophica- tion and sedimentation, which may lead to a reduction in patch size and/or a shift in species compo- sition; although, few studies have been performed to show how these alterations affect the fauna assemblages. The aim of this study was to examine whether 4 structurally different types of vegeta- tion, Fucus vesiculosus, Sargassum muticum, Zostera marina and filamentous algae, attract a unique assemblage of epibenthic fauna, compared to each other and to bare sand. Further, the importance of patch size (0.25, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 m 2 ) on faunal species richness, biomass and assemblage composition within the different vegetation types was investigated. Experimental patches of vegetation were placed in a bay and samples were retrieved after 72 h. Pairwise tests (presence/absence data) showed that the faunal assemblages were significantly different between the vegetation types and also bare sand. Further, the 3 algal treatments (but not the seagrass Z. marina treatment) attracted higher spe- cies richness and a higher biomass of motile epibenthic fauna compared to the bare sand habitat. Among the 4 macrophytes, S. muticum, an invasive species found within the study area, and F. vesiculosus attracted the highest species richness and biomass, which suggests that the co- occurrence of these 2 species (in the absence of space or nutrient competition) results in an important habitat for epibenthic fauna. There was no overall effect of patch size, although within the F. vesi- culosus and Z. marina treatments, patch size-dependent variations were found.

Response of epibenthic faunal assemblages to varying vegetation structures and habitat patch size