| Summary: | Rocky intertidal ecology has had a long history of attempting to identify ecosystem patterns, associations, and the underlying mechanisms of each. Biotic (competition, predation, and trophic cascades) and abiotic (slope, rugosity, aspect, wave exposure, etc.) factors have been shown to influence rocky intertidal ecosystems, but these characteristics are highly variable on the beaches of Prince of Wales and surrounding islands (POW). The shoreline is highly complex, resulting in drastic shifts in environmental parameters. Sea otters, a species shown to restructure kelp ecosystems through predation pressure, were reintroduced to POW fifty years ago and their subsequent expansion created a gradient of sea otter occupation time among rocky intertidal sites. Due to the complexity of environmental and biological forces occurring at rocky intertidal beaches on POW, this study was conducted to measure the vertical distribution of mobile invertebrates as a metric of rocky intertidal community composition. The abundance and biomass of key mobile invertebrates can be used to assess the interactions and relative importance of biotic and abiotic forces on the rocky intertidal ecosystems of POW. NOTE: this is by no means a record of all mobile invertebrates at these sites. Common species and those that might be sea otter prey items were the focus of this study. Examples of groups that were not recorded include, but are not limited to, small chiton species, small snails, Lotia digitalis, small sea cucumber species, etc. Also, some species of snail (Nucella spp. and Lirabuccinum dirum) were not included in the data until later site. Therefore, the abundance and location of these snails is comparable within a site, but caution should be used when comparing them across sites. Site information, including GPS coordinates, can be found in the "Rocky intertidal site information, Western Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, U.S., Summer 2018" data package. The elevation of major biobands at these sites can be found in the "Rocky intertidal bioband elevation, Western Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, U.S., Summer 2018" data package. The distribution of sessile organisms at these sites can be found in the "Rocky intertidal sessile organisms, Western Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, U.S., Summer 2018" data package.
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