MarSci 202 Marine Animals

Taxonomic Rank

Marine Vertebrates §

• Marine Mammals
• Sea Turtles
• Sea Birds
• Fish

Marine Invertebrates §

• Sponges
• Corals
• Worms
• Molluscs
• MarSci 202 Marine Animals
• MarSci 202 PSet 1
• MarSci 202 PSet 2
• Marsci 202 PSet 3
• Marsci Exam 1 Prep
• Marsci Exam 2 Prep

Q

How does the presence of colonies of seals on haul-out sites affect local coastal ecosystems, and how do ecosystems coastal transition zones influence seal population dynamics and behavior?

Environmental Effects §

• Upwelling
  • In continental slope/shelf e.g. SoCal
  • Upwelling fertilizes coastal water
  • & Concentrates fauna & ecosystem interactions
• Seasonal Stratification
  • When depths are different temperatures, water body is still, waters don’t mix. (not rivers or most seas, but often in lakes and some seas)
    • summer: upper water is hot, fall/winter stratification breaks & mixes
    • e.g. cheaspeak bay, florida bay
  • Nutrients are not going to break
  • Coral reefs: waters never come up ← no stratification
• Heat stress
  • Different heat capacity, inter-organism & inter-species variations
  • Substrate (sea floor & water) temperature, solar radiation
  • Different color—some organisms change color per season to adapt to radiation, etc.
• Warming & Acidification
  • Especially affects organisms that are already on the verge of stress
    • e.g. coral bleach (=kicked out symbiotic algae).
      • 30degC: burst cytoplasm.
  • Sea naturally has buffer capacity for protons (by organism carbonates)
  • Exoskeleton creation (e.g. in corals) emits $\text{ce}C{O}_2$
• Flow speed
• Density & Geology: Salt wedge
  • Differences in salinity in layers (salinity stratification) in bays where river (=freshwater) flows in
  • Often in cheaspeak bay, SF bay used to (← now humans take all freshwater)
  • freshwater/saltwater all
• Viscosity
  • Affects more small organisms
  • boundary layer of water that doesn’t move near hard structure (due to drag)
• Tides