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Fiddler crab burrowing increases salt marsh greenhouse gas emissions

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Abstract

Salt marshes are globally important sites of carbon burial, but microbial processes in their soil produce potent greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that can be released back to the atmosphere. Although a great deal is known about how shifting seasons, tides, and salinity influence salt marsh greenhouse gas emissions, little effort has been devoted to understanding how emissions respond to bioturbation and pollution. In this study, we evaluated how fiddler crab bioturbation and oil pollution altered CO2 and CH4 fluxes from Louisiana salt marsh soil through a series of microcosm incubation experiments. CO2 and CH4 fluxes did not consistently increase as a function of crab burrow depth even though soil CO2 and CH4 concentrations increased with depth. Instead, regardless of burrow depth, CO2 and CH4 fluxes were highest (536.7 ± 41.6 and 6.35 ± 0.59 nmol g−1 h−1, respectively) immediately after burrowing activity ceased and within ~ 2 h decreased to a low background level (117.4 ± 17.1 and 0.53 ± 0.26). These background CO2 fluxes persisted through the end of our experiments, but background CH4 fluxes were not detectable after < 1 day, suggesting an important role for methanotrophy. Therefore, crab burrow size had a strong influence on CO2 fluxes, while the rate of burrow excavation was more important for CH4 fluxes. Low to moderate oil concentrations (up to 25.55 mg cm−2) did not alter greenhouse gas fluxes. However, severe oil contamination that decreases fiddler crab abundance and burrowing activity will also indirectly decrease salt marsh greenhouse gas emissions. These findings illuminate the importance of fiddler crab bioturbation to salt marsh carbon cycling and export.

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Data availability

Data are published through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) and are available at https://data.gulfresearchinitiative.org/data/R6.x808.000:0072. The full citation for the data set is: Grow, Adri K., Charles A. Schutte, and Brian J. Roberts. 2021. Carbon dioxide and methane fluxes from experimental salt marsh soil microcosms containing artificial or natural fiddler crab burrows with varying degrees of crude oil contamination. Distributed by: Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC), Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. https://doi.org/10.7266/YGKY9MT7.

Code availability

No custom software applications were used or created for this project.

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Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by a grant from The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to the Coastal Waters Consortium. The involvement of AKG was made possible by a grant from the NSF REU Site Program (OCE-1757887) to BJR and LUMCON. The funders had no role in the design, execution, or analyses of this project. Data are publicly available through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information & Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) at https://data.gulfresearchinitiative.org. We thank the members of the Roberts lab, especially Scott Jones and Ryann Rossi, for assistance and feedback as well as the following REU interns for their help with field and laboratory work associated with this project: Karolyn Agosto-Shaw, Benjamin Crooke, Carli Fawcett, Max Jahns, Herbert Leavitt, Mary Kaytlin Pepper, and Catalina Rubiano.

Funding

Funding was provided by grants from The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to the Coastal Waters Consortium and the NSF REU Site Program (OCE-1757887) to BJR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

    Adri K. Grow

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    Charles A. Schutte

  3. Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), Chauvin, LA, USA

    Charles A. Schutte & Brian J. Roberts

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  1. Adri K. Grow
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  2. Charles A. Schutte
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Correspondence to Charles A. Schutte.

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Grow, A.K., Schutte, C.A. & Roberts, B.J. Fiddler crab burrowing increases salt marsh greenhouse gas emissions. Biogeochemistry 158, 73–90 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-021-00886-5

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