On rocky coastlines, receding tides leave standing pools that have long held a fascination for the amateur seashore naturalist, revealing glimpses of colourful and curious marine plants and animals. Animal diversity is far greater in the sea than in terrestrial or freshwater habitats, and the hugely varied fauna of rock pools reflects that fact. Rock pools also undergo dramatic shifts in temperature, salinity and p H, making such habitats crucibles of adaptation and change. This Naturalists’ Handbook offers a comprehensive introduction to this captivating world, with chapters covering rock-pool ecology, seaweeds, animals, identification and guidelines for possible fieldwork and further study.
Also presented are detailed keys to all the main groups likely to be encountered when rockpooling around Britain and Ireland – from sea squirts to chitons, from anemones to sea spiders, from amphipods to fishes. Rock pools is an indispensable tool in discovering these kaleidoscopic habitats and their multitudinous inhabitants.
Cuprins
Editor’s preface
Acknowledgements
About the author
About Naturalists’ Handbooks
1. Introduction
2. The pool environment
3. Rock-pool seaweeds
4. Rock-pool animals
5. Identification
Key A Guide to major invertebrate animal groups
Key B Sessile, modular animals
Key C Sea spiders (Pycnogonida)
Key D Isopods
Key E Amphipods
Key F Decapods
Key G Shelled gastropods
Key H Chitons
Key I Bivalves
Key J Polychaetes
Key K Heterobranchia
Key L Sea anemones
Key M Echinoderms
Key N Rock-pool fishes
6. Investigating rock pools
7. References and further reading
Index
Despre autor
Peter Hayward began his career as a scientific assistant at the Natural History Museum, where he was introduced to his lifelong specialism, marine bryzoa or sea-mats. He read zoology with geology at Reading University, thence to University of Wales, Swansea as research student, gaining Ph D in population biology and taxonomy of sea-mats.
He is now a senior lecturer at the university, and authority on bryzoa worldwide from Antarctic to coral reefs. Author with Professor John Ryland of four volumes on marine bryzoa in Linnaean Society Synopses series. Co-ordinator of the popular Collins Pocket Guide to the Seashore, co-editor and contributor to the Handbook of the Marine Fauna of north-west Europe (1995), as well as the Naturalists’ Handbooks on seaweed and sandy shore habitats. Zoological editor of Journal of Natural History.
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