A Student’s Guide to the SeashoreAt one time or another, we have all been drawn by the fascination of the seashore. For the holiday maker, the relaxing day by the sea often turns out to be a most rewarding foray among rock pools and dense canopies of seaweed; for naturalists and students, the shore is one of the most challenging habitats. Whatever our interests and expertise, one of our first objectives when faced with the diversity of plant and animal life on the shore is to name the individual specimens and we quickly learn that this can be a difficult, though rewarding, occupation. Once an organism has been identified, a number of questions naturally follow. What is its life-cycle? How does it feed and reproduce? How long does it live? The answers to such questions give an insight into the lives of the plants and animals of the shore and are one of the first steps in an understand ing of the complexity of the shore environment. However, the information required to answer such questions is not always easily accessible and even when it is known it is often scattered in various books and research journals making it difficult and time consuming to find. Although a variety of identification keys and guides is available, some designed for the specialist, others for the amateur, such texts generally give little, if any, information on the biology of the organisms. |
Contents
1 | |
6 | |
8 | |
9 | |
10 | |
Algae | 30 |
Lichenes | 66 |
Angiospermae | 71 |
Annelida | 136 |
Mollusca | 183 |
Arthropoda | 282 |
Sipuncula | 351 |
Echiura | 354 |
Bryozoa | 356 |
Phoronida | 367 |
Echinodermata | 369 |
Porifera | 76 |
Cnidaria | 83 |
Ctenophora | 122 |
Platyhelminthes | 125 |
Nemertea | 129 |
Priapula | 134 |
Hemichordata | 391 |
Chordata | 393 |
Glossary | 432 |
438 | |
463 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
animals antennae aperture attached barnacles Beaks bivalve body branched Breeding occurs British brood brown bryozoans burrows calcareous carapace chaetae Cnidaria coast of England coasts of Britain colony Colour varied common conspicuous crab crevices crustaceans detritus distributed in north-west dorsal fin dorsal surface encrusting estuaries Europe and Britain extending family characteristics feeding female fertilization external Figure flattened free-swimming veliger larva frond Fucus gametes gnathopod Gonozooids hermaphroditic holdfast hydroids inner surface intertidal laminarian large numbers larvae length Linnaeus Longevity lower shore male margin middle shore molluscs muddy-sand north-west Europe operculum pair of pereopods parapodia pelagic periostracum plankton plates polychaetes posterior proboscis recorded reproduction rock pools rocky shores sand seaweed sediment segments sexes are separate shallow sublittoral shell siphons smooth species specimens spines spring and summer stones sublittoral sublittoral to depths substratum suspension feeder tentacles tides tube uropod usually veliger ventral west coast widely distributed worms zooids