ANALYSIS OF TROPHIC STRUCTURE FOLLOWING ESTUARINE HABITAT RESTORATION WITHIN LAKE WORTH LAGOON, FLORIDA

We collected, with FWC, taxa inventory and numerical abundance data at three sites, a restoration concurrent with sampling, an older completed restoration, and an unimproved reference site, from 2014 to 2018 in the Central Lake Worth Lagoon, Florida. We examined effects in response to estuary habitat restoration and water quality on nekton food web structure among sites over time. A binary matrix of plausible interactions among trophic species, classified by size, was used to produce 51 individual food webs and nine trophic structure metrices within the R: Package Cheddar. Interactions of site and restoration, i.e., pre- vs. post-restoration samples, were found to be not significant in repeated-measures ANOVAs for each food web metric. Random forest analysis only identified Secchi depth as an important predictor of food web generality. Our findings suggest that generality and Secchi depth are inversely correlated and relatively stable within the Central Lake Worth Lagoon sites.