Ruppia Maritima: Winner by Default

That was the title of a talk I saw at the benthic ecology meeting this past March by Paul Bologna of Montclair State University. The premise was that due to a variety of anthropogenic stressors, the coastal environments are changing and leading to declines for a number of seagrass species. As a result, he suggests that more opportunistic seagrass species, such as Ruppia maritima, more commonly known as widgeon grass, may become the winner by default. Bologna argues that this poorly studied species may come to dominate the anthropogenically influenced "new" environments, and makes a call for more research into widgeon grass dominated communities to offer a clue of the potential future of our coastal ecosystems.

So it got a few of us in the Peterson lab thinking about Ruppia. I have seen it only a few times in all my time on Long Island, but I know it's here. The first time I saw it was in Great South Bay. I also remember seeing this little grass in Cedar Beach Creek in Southold a few summers ago, but not since. But one site where we know it is present in a small, persistent pond in the salt marsh (i.e., it is a pool of water that remains even as the tide goes out and has been there in the same form, for at least the last nine years) at Scallop Pond in Southampton.

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