Chen Pan, Zhang Yan, Zhu Xiaojing, Lu Changhu
College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
College of Environment and Engineering, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui, China.
PeerJ. 2019 Apr 16;7:e6775. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6775. eCollection 2019.
The effects of invasion on macrobenthos have long been of concern; however, there is currently no unified conclusion regarding these effects. Most studies on crabs focus on one species or limited habitat types, and assessments of the community-level effects of invasion considering multiple species and habitat types have rarely been conducted. In this study, we sampled crabs along a habitat gradient from the shoreline to inland areas on the Yellow Sea coast, including the mudflat, marsh, marsh and marsh. A total of 10 crab species were found among all habitats, with five species in the mudflat, six species in marsh, seven species in marsh and four species in marsh. The Shannon index values for the crab communities were similar between marsh and marsh, and these values were significantly higher than those for the mudflat and marsh. However, the total biomass of crabs was highest in the mudflat, and , and exclusively preferred the mudflat. The analysis of principal components and similarities showed that the crab community structure in marsh was most similar to that in marsh, while the crab community structure in the mudflat was most different from that in the other habitat types. Our results demonstrate that the distribution of crabs varies across a habitat gradient after invasion and that the crab community in marsh is slightly different from that associated with the local vegetation but shows a large difference from that in the mudflat. This study indicates that some crab species may have adapted to habitat containing alien , while other crab species reject this new marsh type. The effects of the distribution of crabs after invasion on the regional ecosystem need further study in the future.
入侵对大型底栖动物的影响长期以来一直受到关注；然而，目前关于这些影响尚无统一结论。大多数关于螃蟹的研究集中在一个物种或有限的栖息地类型上，很少进行考虑多个物种和栖息地类型的入侵对群落水平影响的评估。在本研究中，我们沿着黄海海岸从海岸线到内陆地区的栖息地梯度对螃蟹进行了采样，包括泥滩、沼泽、沼泽和沼泽。在所有栖息地中共发现了10种螃蟹，泥滩中有5种，沼泽中有6种，沼泽中有7种，沼泽中有4种。沼泽和沼泽中螃蟹群落的香农指数值相似，且这些值显著高于泥滩和沼泽中的值。然而，螃蟹的总生物量在泥滩中最高，并且 、 和 只偏好泥滩。主成分分析和相似性分析表明，沼泽中的螃蟹群落结构与沼泽中的最相似，而泥滩中的螃蟹群落结构与其他栖息地类型中的差异最大。我们的结果表明，入侵后螃蟹的分布在栖息地梯度上有所不同，沼泽中的螃蟹群落与当地植被相关的群落略有不同，但与泥滩中的群落有很大差异。本研究表明，一些螃蟹物种可能已经适应了含有外来 的栖息地，而其他螃蟹物种则排斥这种新的沼泽类型。入侵后螃蟹分布对区域生态系统的影响未来需要进一步研究。
