The central role of grazing in seagrass ecology

Abstract

[F]or most of the past 50 My, Caribbean seagrass communities have had to withstand heavy, sustained grazing pressure from several sympatric lineages of large mammalian herbivores. This factor is almost totally absent both from these communities today (wherein manatees are scarce or absent in most areas) and from the thinking of the aquatic botanists and marine ecologistswho study these communities. Consequently, the long-established tenet that seagrass ecosystems are largely detritus-based must be revised to recognize that the modern situation is anomalous, and that the 'normal' pattern throughout most of tropical seagrass history has been that much (probably most) of the primary productivity has been channeled through the guts of herbivores, particularly sirenians. (Domning, 2001) © 2006/2007 Springer. All Rights Reserved.