1 / 13

The Subtidal

The Subtidal. Life on the Continental Shelf. The Continental Shelf. Grabs. Bottom trawls. Dredges. Sampling the Benthic Habitat. The Continental Shelf. What we know about this community: Very few species are dominant and constitute most of the biomass Parallel bottom communities

pete
Download Presentation

The Subtidal

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Subtidal Life on the Continental Shelf The Subtidal

  2. The Continental Shelf The Subtidal

  3. Grabs • Bottom trawls • Dredges Sampling the Benthic Habitat The Subtidal

  4. The Continental Shelf • What we know about this community: • Very few species are dominant and constitute most of the biomass • Parallel bottom communities • Many analogies can be drawn to similar areas • Different species but are ecologically equivalent • These communities are extremely stable over time • Animals are distributed in a patchy manner and organisms occur at various depths in the substrate The Subtidal

  5. Abiotic Factors • Species distribution varies from the poles to the tropics • Shallow water is affected by currents and wave action • Nutrients are not limiting The Subtidal

  6. Soft-bottom Subtidal Communities • This substrate dominates the worlds continental shelves • Animals are distributed in this community based on sediment particle size, stability of the sediment, light and temperature • Organisms usually occur in patches, due to planktonic settlement • Metamorphose and “tasting settlement sites” The Subtidal

  7. Unvegetated Soft-bottom Communities • Notable is absence of large plants and algae • There is little primary production so the filter feeders and suspension feeders rely on detritus brought from estuaries • Deposit feeders and bacteria dominate fine sediments due to high organic content The Subtidal

  8. Seagrass beds • Areas that are carpeted by flowering plants • They develop best in sheltered shallow areas along the coast • Eel grass is our most common representative The Subtidal

  9. Seagrasses • Thick mats of eel grass provide lots of habitat for animals to hide • By stabilizing the sediment it decreases the turbidity • Dead sea grasses provide lots of detritus that benefit suspension, deposit and filter feeders The Subtidal

  10. Sea Grass Food Web The Subtidal

  11. Rocky subtidal bottoms and Kelp Forests • Animals that are present have the same characteristics as those of the rocky intertidal • Kelp is a macroalgae which can reach amazing sizes The Subtidal

  12. Kelp and Kelp Forests The Subtidal

More Related