Exploring the impact of spatial patterns on restoration efforts: promoting self-facilitating feedback mechanisms with an innovative biodegradable seed mussel collector

Transplantations of organisms in aquatic ecosystems play an important role in ecological restoration and commercial practices. However, success rates of these transplantations, especially when ecosystem engineers are involved, are often low. To enhance transplantation success, the promotion of self-facilitation between transplants that mitigate environmental stressors is crucial. Besides, spatial patterns resulting from self-facilitation can enhance ecosystem resilience. Using blue mussels as a model organism, we explored the possibility of increasing transplantation success in a subtidal ecosystem. We used biodegradable structures (“BioShell-SMCs”) to ameliorate self-facilitating feedback mechanisms to overcome environmental stressors in the initial post-transplantation phase, and to increase transplantation success by implementing large-scale spatial configurations, mimicking natural mussel bed patterns. The structures are an innovation of traditional seed mussel collectors (SMCs) used in mussel cultivation. They consist of a biodegradable net based on a compound of aliphatic polyesters, filled with empty cockle shells around a coconut fiber rope. We tested whether different spatial configurations could increase transplantation success of mussel seed: low versus high density labyrinth pattern and banded pattern. The results of this experiment showed high losses (approximately 75%), with no significant variation between configurations. The lack of migration due to unexpected retention of the biodegradable net hindered the initiation of natural aggregations, resulting in increased competition among mussels. Besides, factors such as hydrodynamic dislodgement, burial and interannual variation likely contributed to the observed losses. While the BioShell-SMC has not demonstrated large-scale success, this research contributes to understanding the mechanisms that underlie successful transplantation strategies in aquatic ecosystems.