The null hypothesis of no crab effect on carbon as carbohydrates (CCHO),proteins (C-PRT), lipids (C-LIP), LOC content, on the ratio of each carbon pool to LOC, on OMbioavailability in sediments, and on the benthic flux of each substance (i.e., DOC, dissolved carbohydrates and dissolved proteins) were evaluated independently for each parametand intertidal site (i.e., mudflat and saltmarsh) using one way ANOVA.
We used a posteriori multiple comparison tests to evaluate statistical differences among groups when detecting significant differences with ANOVA.
Normality and homoscedasticity of data were evaluated by using the Shapiro–Wilk and Levene tests, respectively and when assumption could not be met even when using common monotonic data transformations, nonparametric tests were used instead of ANOVA