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. Human activities, among which dredging and land use change in river basins,are altering estuarine ecosystems. These activities may result in changes insedimentary processes, affecting biodiversity of sediment macrofauna. Asmacrofauna controls sediment chemistry and fluxes of energy and matter betweenwater column and sediment, changes in the structure of macrobenthiccommunities could affect the functioning of an entire ecosystem. We assessedthe impact of sediment deposition on intertidal macrobenthic communities andon rates of an important ecosystem function, i.e. sediment community oxygenconsumption (SCOC). An experiment was performed with undisturbed sedimentsamples from the Scheldt river estuary (SW Netherlands). The samples weresubjected to four sedimentation regimes: one control and three with adeposited sediment layer of 1, 2 or 5 cm. Oxygen consumption was measuredduring incubation at ambient temperature. Luminophores applied at thesurface, and a seawater–bromide mixture, served as tracers for bioturbationand bio-irrigation, respectively. After incubation, the macrofauna wasextracted, identified, and counted and then classified into functional groupsbased on motility and sediment reworking capacity. Total macrofaunaldensities dropped already under the thinnest deposits. The most affectedfauna were surficial and low-motility animals, occurring at high densities inthe control. Their mortality resulted in a drop in SCOC, which decreasedsteadily with increasing deposit thickness, while bio-irrigation andbioturbation activity showed increases in the lower sediment depositionregimes but decreases in the more extreme treatments. The initial increasedactivity likely counteracted the effects of the drop in low-motility, surficialfauna densities, resulting in a steady rather than sudden fall in oxygenconsumption. We conclude that the functional identity in terms of motilityand sediment reworking can be crucial in our understanding of the regulationof ecosystem functioning and the impact of habitat alterations such assediment deposition.

Functional trait responses to sediment deposition reduce macrofauna-mediated ecosystem functioning in an estuarine mudflat