Gp. Quinn et Mj. Keough, POTENTIAL EFFECT OF ENCLOSURE SIZE ON FIELD EXPERIMENTS WITH HERBIVOROUS INTERTIDAL GASTROPODS, Marine ecology. Progress series, 98(1-2), 1993, pp. 199-201
Many experimental studies on the ecology of benthic marine herbivores,
particularly those on intra- and inter-specific competition, have use
d enclosures to manipulate animal densities. We examined a potential p
roblem in the interpretation of these experiments, i.e. the effects of
different enclosure sizes on mortality and body weights of a rocky in
tertidal limpet fenced at natural densities. There was no mortality du
ring the experiment but body weights of limpets were significantly dif
ferent between fence sizes varying 4-fold. Interpretations of enclosur
e experiments generally, and comparisons of the magnitude of treatment
effects in competition experiments specifically, may be equivocal if
enclosure sizes are different.