Oyster survival differences in mesocosm experiments at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, AL between July and August 2019

This dataset contains survivorship differences between oysters set in a mesocosm experiment to determine how induced defenses, habitat structure, and the presence of apex predators shape intermediate consumers feeding behavior and basal prey survival. Oysters (a basal prey) induced to grow stronger shells were planted with control oysters both inside sheltered locations and in exposed locations along with predatory mud crabs (an intermediate consumer). This setup either had a blue crab or no apex predator added to the system whereupon individual oyster survival was checked every 24 hours for three days.

 Predators often produce nonconsumptive effects (NCEs) in their prey in the form of behavioral or morphological changes. Such changes often have larger or equal consequences for population dynamics as the predator directly consumes individual prey. However, it is not well understood how predators feeding across multiple trophic levels cause cascading NCEs that interact across prey trophic levels or how the prey survival benefits from these interactions change across contexts. These data help demonstrate how NCEs can influence population dynamics across space and quantify the strength of these context-dependent interactions.

Data were collected by Drs. Benjamin Belgrad, Lee Smee, and Marc Weissburg from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Georgia Institute of Technology.