Caranguejos ermitões fornecendo substrato para briozoários

Abstract

The oceans and their adjacent environments cover more than 71% of the Earth’s surface, being the invertebrates the most diversity group in this hug ecosystem. Understanding the ecological relationships of marine invertebrates is fundamental to assess the marginal marine health. In this sense, the goals of present studied is identifying the ecological relation between hermit crabs and bryozoan communities. A total of 1,337 shells from death assemblages available in the foreshore zone of Coastal Plain of the Rio Grande do Sul State were analyzed in order to verify how epibionts are present in the shells from death assemblages, and to know whether bryozoans occur in both gastropod and bivalve shells or only in one of these two groups. Balanomorphs, bryozoans, serpulids and bivalves represent the epibionts observed in this study. However, bryozoans only were observed in gastropod shells. According to the results, hermit crabs maybe represent an important influence in the development of bryozoan communities keeping the gastropod shells available in the sediment/water interface. Finally, this study provides an important database to ecological managements in coastal zones.