RECONSTRUCTION OF SEAGRASS DYNAMICS - AGE-DETERMINATIONS AND ASSOCIATED TOOLS FOR THE SEAGRASS ECOLOGIST

All seagrasses are rhizomatous plants that grow by reiteration of a limited set of modules. Their past growth history can therefore be reconstructed from the scars left by abscised leaves and flowers on the long-lived rhizomes or the seasonal signals imprinted in the frequency and size of their modules. We provide here the basic foundations and assumptions of these reconstruction techniques and the calculations involved in their application. We then show their reliability and potential to quantify an array of ecological processes, such as plant demography, leaf and rhizome production, flowering intensity, and seagrass responses to anthropogenic perturbations, based on our recent studies of Mediterranean, Caribbean and Indo-Pacific seagrass species. Reconstruction techniques have also proven useful in demonstrating the role of seagrasses as tracers of sediment movement over seagrass beds and the rates of colonisation and expansion of seagrass patches. These reconstruction techniques should provide a powerful tool to improve our knowledge of seagrass species and populations from remote areas based on a single or just a few visits. This should, therefore, allow us to sample many seagrass meadows using limited resources, thus generating a strong foundation for the study of comparative seagrass ecology and testing of theories previously applied to terrestrial plant populations.