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The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea

A fossil oyster bed (Ostrea edulis) was recently encountered offshore Helgoland (German Bight). Oysters are important filter feeders in marine environments and their habitat structure supports a large associated biodiversity. The European flat oyster Ostrea edulis has historically occurred in vast p...

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Autores principales: Sander, Lasse, Hass, H. Christian, Michaelis, Rune, Groß, Christopher, Hausen, Tanja, Pogoda, Bernadette
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7886217/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33591987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242208
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author Sander, Lasse
Hass, H. Christian
Michaelis, Rune
Groß, Christopher
Hausen, Tanja
Pogoda, Bernadette
author_facet Sander, Lasse
Hass, H. Christian
Michaelis, Rune
Groß, Christopher
Hausen, Tanja
Pogoda, Bernadette
author_sort Sander, Lasse
collection PubMed
description A fossil oyster bed (Ostrea edulis) was recently encountered offshore Helgoland (German Bight). Oysters are important filter feeders in marine environments and their habitat structure supports a large associated biodiversity. The European flat oyster Ostrea edulis has historically occurred in vast populations in the North Sea, but declined massively in the early 20th century. The ecological restoration of Ostrea habitats is a current focal point in the North Sea. To better understand the mechanisms that caused the local collapse of the oyster population, this study investigated the size structure, weight, and age of the shells, along with the spatial dimensions, seafloor properties, and environmental context of the oyster bed. The results show that the demise of the population occurred around 700 CE, ruling out excessive harvest as a driver of decline. Synchronicity of increased geomorphological activity of rivers and concurrent major land use changes in early medieval Europe suggest that increased sedimentation was a viable stressor that reduced the performance of the oysters. The shells provided no indication of a demographically poor state of the oyster bed prior to its demise, but manifested evidence of the wide-spread occurrence of the boring sponge Cliona sp. Our study challenges the assumption of a stable preindustrial state of the European flat oyster in the North Sea, and we conclude that the long-term variability of environmental conditions needs to be addressed to benchmark success criteria for the restoration of O. edulis.
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spelling pubmed-78862172021-02-23 The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea Sander, Lasse Hass, H. Christian Michaelis, Rune Groß, Christopher Hausen, Tanja Pogoda, Bernadette PLoS One Research Article A fossil oyster bed (Ostrea edulis) was recently encountered offshore Helgoland (German Bight). Oysters are important filter feeders in marine environments and their habitat structure supports a large associated biodiversity. The European flat oyster Ostrea edulis has historically occurred in vast populations in the North Sea, but declined massively in the early 20th century. The ecological restoration of Ostrea habitats is a current focal point in the North Sea. To better understand the mechanisms that caused the local collapse of the oyster population, this study investigated the size structure, weight, and age of the shells, along with the spatial dimensions, seafloor properties, and environmental context of the oyster bed. The results show that the demise of the population occurred around 700 CE, ruling out excessive harvest as a driver of decline. Synchronicity of increased geomorphological activity of rivers and concurrent major land use changes in early medieval Europe suggest that increased sedimentation was a viable stressor that reduced the performance of the oysters. The shells provided no indication of a demographically poor state of the oyster bed prior to its demise, but manifested evidence of the wide-spread occurrence of the boring sponge Cliona sp. Our study challenges the assumption of a stable preindustrial state of the European flat oyster in the North Sea, and we conclude that the long-term variability of environmental conditions needs to be addressed to benchmark success criteria for the restoration of O. edulis. Public Library of Science 2021-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7886217/ /pubmed/33591987 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242208 Text en © 2021 Sander et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sander, Lasse
Hass, H. Christian
Michaelis, Rune
Groß, Christopher
Hausen, Tanja
Pogoda, Bernadette
The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title_full The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title_fullStr The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title_full_unstemmed The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title_short The late Holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the North Sea
title_sort late holocene demise of a sublittoral oyster bed in the north sea
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7886217/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33591987
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242208
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