Estimation of the size of molluscan larval settlement using the death assemblage

The death assemblage is an important source of information about temporal variability in community composition. The living community and the short-term death assemblage have been studied at a sandy-bottom station in the Laguna Madre, Texas. Abundance peaks of living species are usually followed by long-term abundance increases of the same species in the death assemblage. This phenomenon provides a tool for investigating between-sampling-occasion events in the preservable component of the living community. Given a six-week sampling regimen, approximately 90% of all individuals settle, live and die during the period between consecutive sampling occasions and are not collected alive. Thus, larval settlements are consistently underestimated by about 90% from data on the living community. Comparisons of year-to-year variability in settlement and survivorship of settled individuals in the youngest age classes may be considerably in error. Better estimations of actual settlement and survivorship can be made from the death assemblage provided that the rate of taphonomic loss can be quantified. The rate of taphonomic loss can be expressed as the species' half-life, the time required for the destruction of 50% of the individuals that were added to the death assemblage following settlement. Half-lives for the smallest size classes in the death assemblage at this site are about 100 days.