Bioturbation
Bioturbation is the reworking of soils and sediments by animals or plants.[1] It disturbs and changes sediment. Any animal living in the soil or on the bottom under water may disturb the sediment by moving it around. Burrowing, eating and defecation of sediment grains, building galleries (etc.) all disturb the sediment.
Common bioturbators include annelids ("ringed worms") such as oligochaetes, bivalves like mussels, clams, gastropods, holothurians.
Fossil sites with bioturbation do not leave traces of soft-bodied animals. In contrast, fossil sites with undisturbed sediment have given rise to important lagerstätten with many impressions of small soft-bodied invertebrates.
Bioturbation Media
Sediment on the left tusk of a walrus. Walrus bioturbations in Arctic benthic sediments have large-scale ecosystem effects.
The lugworm Arenicola marina
Gobies keeping watch outside a shrimp burrow
Photograph taken on habitat restoration site where the gophers were being trapped out of concern that they were destroying sensitive vegetation.
Three Chironomidae larvae from the Vermont EPSCoR Streams Project
Bioturbation and bioirrigation in the sediment at the bottom of a coastal ecosystems
Planolites sp. fossil from Junget Beach, Salling, Denmark, at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen.
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