Benthic primary producers are key to sustain the Wadden Sea food web: stable carbon isotope analysis at landscape scale

Benthic primary producers, specifically microphytobenthos, are the dominant energy source sustaining the Wadden Sea's food web, supporting higher trophic levels including worms, molluscs, crustaceans, fish, and birds. This finding was derived from a large-scale stable carbon isotope analysis across 1460 km² of intertidal surface area in the Dutch Wadden Sea, involving 9,165 samples from 839 locations and 178 species. The study used a two-food-source isotope-mixing model to distinguish between benthic and pelagic primary producers, revealing significant spatial heterogeneity in their δ¹³C values. This research underscores the critical role of benthic primary producers in coastal ecosystems and highlights the necessity for spatially explicit sampling in such environments.

Christianen, M. J. A., Middelburg, J. J., Holthuijsen, S. J., Jouta, J., Compton, T. J., van der Heide, T., Piersma, T., Sinninghe Damsté, J. S., van der Veer, H. W., Schouten, S., & Olff, H. (2017). Benthic primary producers are key to sustain the Wadden Sea food web: stable carbon isotope analysis at landscape scale. Ecology, 98(6), 1498–1512. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.1837