Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Publication Date

12-2019

Journal

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volume

374

Issue

1788

First Page

20190209

Abstract

The eastern oyster plays a vital role in estuarine habitats, acting as an ecosystem engineer and improving water quality. Populations of Chesapeake Bay oysters have declined precipitously in recent decades. The fossil record, which preserves 500 000 years of once-thriving reefs, provides a unique opportunity to study pristine reefs to establish a possible baseline for mitigation. For this study, over 900 fossil oysters were examined from three Pleistocene localities in the Chesapeake region. Data on oyster shell lengths, lifespans and population density were assessed. Comparisons to modern Crassostrea virginica, sampled from monitoring surveys of similar environments, reveal that fossil oysters were significantly larger, longer-lived and more abundant than modern oysters from polyhaline salinity zones. This pattern results from the preferential harvesting of larger, reproductively more active females from the modern population. These fossil data, combined with modern estimates of age-based fecundity and mortality, make it possible to estimate ecosystem services in these long-dead reefs, including filtering capacity, which was an order of magnitude greater in the past than today. Conservation palaeobiology can provide us with a picture of not just what the Chesapeake Bay looked like, but how it functioned, before humans.

DOI

10.1098/rstb.2019.0209

Keywords

oysters; conservation palaeobiology; Chesapeake Bay; Crassostrea virginica; Pleistocene

Supplemental Files
rstb20190209_si_001.pdf (74 kB)
Table 1
rstb20190209_si_002.pdf (55 kB)
Table 2
rstb20190209_si_003.pdf (51 kB)
Table 3
rstb20190209_si_004.xls (106 kB)
Filtration calculator
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