Recovery of macrobenthos in defaunated tropical estuarine sediments

► Recolonization and recovery time of macrobenthos after defaunation were analyzed. ► We simulate hypoxia/anoxia by a manipulative mesoscale field experiment. ► The rapidity of benthic community recovery was inversely proportional to the sampling depth. ► The recovery of the defaunated area was reached in 5 months based on species dependent (multivariate) analysis.