Relações ecológicas entre Melampus coffeus (Gastropoda: Pulmonata) e a serapilheira no médio estuário do rio Pacoti, Ceará

Abstract

The litter is essential for the nutrients and organic matter cycles in forests ecosystems. These vegetal detritus are a food source to many groups of animals that act directly on the litter decomposition. Litter also seems to provide microhabitats and works as a shelter for many individuals of the mangrove fauna. The gastropod Melampus coffeus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Ellobiidae) is a common snail in mangroves from the Atlantic and feed on mangrove leaves. These animals must be important components in detritus based food webs and may accelerate the detritus decompositions processes and also facilitate the mangrove litter consume by other organisms. It was hypothesized that these gastropods use mangrove litter as a food source, thus accelerating its decomposition, and as a refuge. So its spatial distribution may be directly affected by litter biomass accumulation. Therefore this research aimed to evaluate the M. coffeus spatial distribution related to biomasses of different mangrove litter fractions biomasses besides evaluate the feeding behavior of this specie when submitted to a diet based on different mangrove tissues. To test such hypothesis samples of M. coffeus and litter were procedure monthly through a year in a fringe mangrove forest in the middle estuary of Pacoti river, Ceará, northeast of Brazil. The population density and shell length of M. coffeus were recorded and compared to the biomasses of different Rhizophora mangle structures that were sampled during this research. In addition of it laboratory and field experiments were carried out to test, respectively, the feeding preference of M. coffeus to different R. mangle tissues (leaves, twigs and flowers) and to evaluate the importance of these snails on R. mangle leaves decomposition in the study area. The results indicated that the presence of twigs in the mangrove litter may favor the occupation by smaller individuals of these snails, probably because these structures may provide a shelter against predators attack and dissection. However M. coffeus seemed to avoid such vegetal tissues as source of food and prefers some more palatable tissues like leaves and flowers. Field experiment confirmed that these gastropods feed on leaves of R. mangle, especially when these tissues get into advanced decomposition stages. So, because of the abundance in mangrove areas and because its ecological relations with mangrove litter, M. coffeus might be an important tool to environmental conservation researches, as its presence may be influenced by the mangrove litter production and, for consequence, by mangrove forest structure. Moreover, M. coffeus spatial distribution is potentially capable to affect the distribution of others organisms that are probably elements of the mangrove detritus food web.