Worldwide, salt marshes have proven important or even essential for a wide variety of marine nekton. But in the world's largest intertidal wetland, the Wadden Sea, their role for nekton is surprisingly unexplored. Building on extensive field sampling, this study presents an inventory of fish and crustacean species using German Wadden Sea salt marshes and investigates their habitat use and affinity. Ten species dominated the nekton assemblage of the salt-marsh creeks both in frequency of occurrence and in relative abundance. Repetitive samplings resulted in highly variable catches, probably caused by the abundance in the subtidal. However, common goby (Pomatoschistus microps) and brown shrimp (Crangon crangon) were depleted with the 9 consecutive hauls when occurring in high numbers, indicating a high habitat affinity. Seasonal and diurnal quantitative sampling revealed seasonal shifts within the nekton community and significant higher densities during night than day for seven out of the nine dominant salt-marsh nekton species. Nekton densities tended to be lower than elsewhere in the Wadden Sea and thus animals using the salt-marsh creeks may benefit from lower resource competition. Compared to the subtidal not only the species composition differed significantly but also the size composition. The majority of fish in the marsh creeks were small (97% < 4.5 cm), consisting of larvae, juveniles and adults of small species. Thus, the use of salt-marsh creeks seems predominantly be triggered by size than by life stage. The absence of aquatic and avian piscivores indicates that salt-marsh creeks function for small nekton as refuge from predators. However, the habitat value depends also on the connected low tide refuges and the access pathways in between. The difference of the nekton community of the marsh creeks from the subtidal raises the demand for habitat-specific monitoring programmes and further research on the connectivity and interactions between different habitat types, both considering seasonal and diurnal abundance variabilities.

在全球范围内，盐沼已被证明对于各种各样的海洋动物都非常重要，甚至是必不可少的。但是，在世界上最大的潮间带湿地瓦登海中，它们对尼克顿的作用令人惊讶地未被开发。在大量野外采样的基础上，本研究提供了使用德国瓦登海盐沼的鱼类和甲壳类物种清单，并调查了它们的栖息地用途和亲和力。十种物种在发生频率和相对丰度上都主导着盐沼小河的尼克顿组合。重复采样导致渔获量变化很大，可能是由于潮下带的丰度造成的。然而，普通虾虎鱼（Pomatoschistus microps）和棕虾（Crangon crangon））发生时有9个连续拖运，因此数量减少，表明栖息地亲和力很高。季节性和昼夜定量采样显示，九种优势盐沼纳克顿物种中的七种，其奈克顿群落内的季节变化和夜间的密度明显高于白天。Nekton密度往往低于瓦登海的其他地区，因此，使用盐沼溪流的动物可能会受益于较低的资源竞争。与潮下带相比，不仅物种组成明显不同，而且大小组成也不同。沼泽小河中的大多数鱼类都很小（97％<4.5厘米），包括幼虫，幼鱼和成年小种。因此，盐沼小溪的使用似乎主要是由大小而不是生命阶段引起的。没有水生和鸟类的食肉动物，这表明盐沼小溪作为小猪的避难所，起到了避难所的作用。但是，栖息地的价值还取决于相连的退潮避难所及其之间的通道。沼泽小河的尼克顿群落与潮下带之间的差异增加了对特定栖息地监测计划的需求，并进一步研究了不同栖息地类型之间的连通性和相互作用，同时考虑了季节和昼夜丰度变化。