Insect and spider availability and use in diet of saltmarsh breeding birds and what invasive Phragmites has to do with it

Salt marshes are a highly productive, ecosystem service-providing habitat that is shrinking due to sea-level rise, introduced plants, and nearby development. We have a huge gap in knowledge of what invertebrates, especially insects and spiders, live in the marsh, how they may be negatively affected by invasive plants, and how greatly their loss will influence the rest of the saltmarsh community, such as endangered saltmarsh breeding birds. With this study, we can take one step closer into finding out how large a role they play. We also are still working to understand the diet of the threatened birds that reside in the saltmarsh. Increasingly now fecal analyses have become a common method to analyze diet, so with this study and others, we can soon confirm the foraging behavior of saltmarsh birds and help protect them with this new information of their life history and adaptations. While there is still more work to be done, preliminary results reveal 1) relatively higher species richness that exists among native over invasive plants and 2) insects and spiders are a large proportion of saltmarsh sparrow diets, indicating their value to these threatened saltmarsh species.