species Flashcards
Calanus hyperboreus
Copepods
Arctic
Eat phytoplankton
Overwinter at depth with high lipid storage
Patella vulgata
Common limpet
Important rocky shore grazer - use radula to scrape algae off rocks
Secondary gills to use water around the surface of the rock
Morphological plasticity - high shore limpets have smaller foot + grow taller to reduce heat loss and desiccation (Helmuth 1998)
Littorina littorea
Common periwinkle
Grazer on UK rocky shores
Mid-lower shore
Nereis diversicolor
Ragworm
Important food source for wading birds in estuaries
Euryhaline - copes very well in low salinity but not in completely freshwater
Eunice aphroditois
Bobbit worm
Benthic predator in burrows
Sargassum
Group of seaweeds providing substrate in the Gulf of Mexico
Diverse food web but actually supported by phytoplankton (Rooker et al. 2006)
Rhincodon typus
Whale shark
Biggest fish on Earth - 12m long!
Filter feeder
Long distance seasonal migrations and daily vertical migrations (Wilson et al. 2006)
Lysianassoids
Most abundant amphipods of benthic communities
Scavengers
Detect food by chemoreception
Ciona intestinalis
Sea squirt
Encrusting benthic species
Maerl
Mixture of red seaweeds
Produce hard, chalky calcium carbonate skeletons -> hard substrate for other organisms
Needs sunlight to grow - lives in water shallower than 20m
Avicennaceae
Black mangroves
Rhizophoraceae
Red mangroves
Pelvetica
Seaweed on rocky shores
Waxy cuticle to prevent desiccation slows photosynthesis
Fucus spiralis
Upper shore seaweed species
Spiral keeps water near to prevent desiccation but also reduces surface area so photosynthesis is reduced
Fucus vesiculosis
Mid shore seaweed species
Has pneumatocysts to keep afloat when tide is coming in - photosynthesis continues
Melarhaphe neritoides
Top shore small periwinkle
Littorina saxatalis
Upper shore small periwinkle
Littorina obtusa
Flat periwinkle
Mid shore
Nucella lapilus
Dog whelk
Drills through the shells of other organisms to eat
Pisaster ochracceus
Purple sea star
Predates on mussels -> controls lower limit on rocky shores
Increases biodiversity by preventing mussel domination - top-down control
Zostera marina
Seagrass Common at mouth of estuaries Needs stable sediment to fix onto Fish nursery ground Sea horses = sea grasses specialists
Carcinus maenas
Common shore crab
Classic estuarine osmoregulator
Temperature = key determinant of distribution (migrates to deeper waters when cool), inactive below 8C
Platichthys flesus
Flounder
Common in estuaries
Juveniles in upper estuaries + adults in lower
Predators cannot tolerate low salinity - juveniles protected
Spawn in open sea
Osmoregulators
Branta bernicla
Brent geese
Feed on seagrasses in estuaries