Understanding biodiversity trends of highly disturbed urban landscapes is essential as anthropogenic factors continue to drive global biodiversity loss. Within marine ecosystems, macrofaunal fouling communities, aggregations of epibenthic invertebrates that colonize human-made structures, represent an ecologically important subset of urban coastlines. The drivers underpinning their assemblages are unclear, however, as the group remains understudied. This project examines driving factors of macrofaunal community assemblage by analyzing the trends of nearshore fouling communities around Tampa Bay, Florida. Fouling community assessments were completed by performing seasonal scrape analyses at floating docks at ten sites around Tampa Bay during the summer and winter of 2022. The diversity and abundance of invasive species were recorded and analyzed to determine community resilience. Sites were compared based on diversity and dissimilarity indices, and the importance of individual drivers was determined by comparative analysis. This project fills gaps in scientific knowledge surrounding these important urban communities and will lend valuable information to the overall conservation efforts of Tampa Bay.

Primary Presenter: Cassidy Bell, University of South Florida (bellstock13@gmail.com)

Authors:

Cassidy Bell, University of South Florida St. Petersburg  (bell38@usf.edu)

J. Sean Doody, University of South Florida St. Petersburg  (jsdoody@usf.edu)

Timothy Henkel, University of South Florida St. Petersburg  (tphenkel@usf.edu)

Heather Judkins, University of South Florida St. Petersburg  (judkins@usf.edu)