Biodiversity & Conservation

Ruppia spp. communities provide primary productivity to brackish water environments and add habitat complexity to otherwise low diversity habitats. Ruppia spp. and other aquatic plants and seagrass provide primary productivity to surrounding communities and deeper waters via the detrital food chain. In addition, they support significant invertebrate secondary productivity. Ruppia beds provide temporary substratum for juvenile settlement and a refuge from predation for some species. The invertebrate population they support is probably an important food source for small predatory fish such as sticklebacks and pipefish as well as waterfowl.

Ruppia species themselves provide a food source for some wildfowl, especially the coots (Fulica atra) and the wigeon (Anas penelope) (see ecological relationships). Ruppia species and other aquatic plants are cultivated and managed in artificial wetlands in the U.S.A as wildfowl feeding areas (Verhoeven & van Vierssen, 1978; Verhoeven, 1980b; Kantrup, 1991; Rodwell, 2000).

This biotope occurs in lagoonal habitats, which are rare and unusual habitats in the UK and regarded as a UK Biodiversity Action Plan habitat. Lagoons support rare and scarce species of plants and animals, e.g. the nationally scarce foxtail stonewort Lamprothamnium papulosum may occur in this biotope and is protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1985. This biotope was considered to be uncommon by the MNCR but Rodwell (2000) presented a wider distribution.