. The ecology of the Apalachicola Bay system : an estuarine profile. Estuarine ecology -- Florida Apalachicola Bay; Estuarine area conservation -- Florida. Fiqure 37. Simplified feeding associations of four dominant fishes--bay anchovy, sand seatrout, Atlantic croaker, spot--and blue crabs in the Apalachicola estuary. Four food compartments are shown: phytoplankton (P), holoplankton (H), meroplankton and benthos (MB), and sediments (S). Major food items in the compartments are: DE=detritus, 8I=bivalves, HC=harpacticoid copepods, NE=nematodes, IN=insects, PO=polychaetes, SH=shrimp, MY=mysids, C
. The ecology of the Apalachicola Bay system : an estuarine profile. Estuarine ecology -- Florida Apalachicola Bay; Estuarine area conservation -- Florida. Fiqure 37. Simplified feeding associations of four dominant fishes--bay anchovy, sand seatrout, Atlantic croaker, spot--and blue crabs in the Apalachicola estuary. Four food compartments are shown: phytoplankton (P), holoplankton (H), meroplankton and benthos (MB), and sediments (S). Major food items in the compartments are: DE=detritus, 8I=bivalves, HC=harpacticoid copepods, NE=nematodes, IN=insects, PO=polychaetes, SH=shrimp, MY=mysids, CR=crabs, FS=fishes, CC=calanoid copepods, OI=diatoms. Numbers indicate dry-weight contribution of particular food items (within boxes) and food contributions of major food compartments (after Laughlin 1979 and Sheridan 1978). transfer from upland systems. The planktonic and detrital pathways come together at the sediment level through repackaging of fecal material and the activity of the microorganisms. The microbes transform dissolved nutrients into available particulate matter. Over 2% of the dry-weight mass of the sediments is composed of organic carbon, bacterial biomass, and extracellular polysaccharides (D. C. White personal communication). The sediment organic matrix and POM form the basis of the benthic (detrital) food webs. The grazing of detritus and its microbial populations enhances nutrient quality for subsequent microbial development by stimulating further microbial productivity and enhancing the nitrogen and phosphorus content of the POM. Physical disturbance, through wind and tidal action and active predation and biological activity, is one of the reasons why the Apalachicola estuary is such a productive system. Seasonal relationships among the various physical and biological factors in the bay system have been developed (Figure 38). Although the biological response to a given event usually follows a nonlinear or curvilinear pattern, certain relation- ships have
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