Product Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
It is crucial to study how food resources are allocated in order to understand how invertebrate species of soft-bottomed benthic communities can live in the same environment, especially when belonging to the same trophic level. On the southern shore of the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary, the polychaetes Nereis virens (Nereidae) and Nephtys caeca (Nephtyidae) represent the main infaunal predators and are known to regulate (by predation) other populations within their community. For these animal populations, there is a high degree of spatial overlap in the horizontal dimension as well as vertically in the sediment column. The purpose of this study was to describe and compare the feeding activity of N. virens and N. caeca in relation to several environmental factors. The feeding activity of N. caeca was further studied under natural and experimental conditions and a feeding experiment was carried out to evaluate how the food resource is subdivided in conditions of high spatial overlap. Finally, the prospecting activity of N. virens was described under natural conditions. N. virens and N. caeca exhibited a high degree of dietary overlap, particularly at the adult stage. This food resource overlap can easily influence the regulation of these species, even though they display different feeding responses to environmental stimuli. Tides and storm events can also influence the feeding behaviour. We conclude that different behavioural feeding responses likely favour the occurrence of these two species in the same trophic environment. ... Read more

Product Description
Examining the link between interrelated systems, this book deals with environments that intersect the shallow subtidal, intertidal and frequently flooded supratidal shoreline. It defines the land-water contact along seagrass beds, intertidal flats, beaches, salt marshes, mangroves, plus a wide variety of human altered environments: reclaimed land; disposal areas; roads; building and shore protection structures. These environments are becoming more fragmented through time as a result of human development, and the nature of the interaction between these environments is becoming more obscure. The book includes studies and case histories that describe and discuss the processes that create and shape the physical and biological environments on estuarine shorelines. They also identify the state of knowledge and trends in research that may be applied to the solution of scientific and management problems. The book combines process-orientated studies of shoreline dynamics with case studies examining spatial and temporal variability of shoreline change. ... Read more