Salinity stress drives herbivory rates and selective grazing in subtidal seagrass communities.

The role of environmental-stress gradients in driving trophic processes like grazing, has potential to shape ecosystem responses to environmental change. In subtidal seagrass systems, however, the variation in top-down processes along stress gradients are poorly understood. We deployed herbivory assays using the five most common seagrass species of Shark Bay, to determine whether herbivory pressure changed across a salinity-stress gradient from oceanic (38 PSU) to hyper-saline (51 PSU) conditions.