Ichnofacies can provide information about water depth,
salinity,
turbidity and energy. In general, traces found in shallower water are vertical, those in deeper water are more horizontal and patterned. This is partly because of the relative abundance of suspended food particles, such as
plankton, in the shallower waters of the
photic zone, and partly because vertical burrows are more secure in the turbulent conditions of shallow water. In deeper waters, there is a necessary transition to sediment feeding (extracting
nutrients from the mud). Food availability, hence trace type, is also controlled by energy: high energy environments keep food particles suspended, whereas in lower energy areas, food settles out evenly, and burrows will tend to spread out to cover as much area as economically as possible. Ichnofacies have a major advantage over using body fossils to gauge the same factors: body fossils can be transported, but trace fossils are always
in situ. ==Recognized invertebrate ichnofacies==