Abstract
- Burrowing ghost shrimp (Callianassidae) have been shown to exert a strong influence on the abundance of macro-infauna in soft-sediment communities, especially through reduction in the densities of many sedentary species. However, relatively little is known about the community effects of other burrowing shrimp, such as mud shrimp, Upogebia spp., that occur commonly in many estuaries of North America. A transplant/exclusion experiment was conducted to examine the effects of Upogebia pugettensis (Dana) on the abundance of other macro-infauna in a Pacific Northwest tideflat. Several numerically dominant, sedentary crustaceans and polychaetes exhibited lower abundances in the presence of Upogebia as compared to treatments where the mud shrimp was absent. The overall pattern of faunal response to the presence of U. pugettensis was similar to that reported for Callianassa californiensis (Dana), an unexpected finding given the different burrowing and feeding habits of these two crustaceans.