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Wrack Zone
The wrack zone or wrack line is a coastal feature where organic material (e.g. kelp, seagrass, shells) and other debris is deposited at high tide. This zone acts as a natural input of marine resources into a terrestrial system, providing food and habitat for a variety of coastal organisms. Physical characteristics The wrack zone is most commonly associated with a sandy beach habitat but can also be present in rocky shores, mangroves, salt marshes, and other coastal systems. Debris is carried up the intertidal zone as the tide comes in, and is deposited on the sand when the tide goes out. The zone can be recognized as a linear patch of debris toward the upper part of a beach running parallel to the water's edge. The location of the wrack zone varies geographically and temporally. It is found at a higher elevation during spring tides compared to neap tides. The size of a beach and its intertidal zone will influence the location of wrack deposition. Additionally, storms will often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wrack Line Reveals Last High Tide Mark Near The Dunes
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Wrack may refer to: * wrack (mathematics), a concept in knot theory * wrack (seaweed), several species of seaweed * '' Wrack'', a novel by James Bradley (Australian writer) * Charlie Wrack (1899–1979), English footballer * Darren Wrack (born 1976), English footballer * Matt Wrack (born 1962), British firefighter and trade unionist * Wrack, the leading broodmare sire in North America in 1935 * ''Wrack'' (video game), A first person shooter video game made by Final Boss Entertainment See also * Rack (other) RACK may refer to: * RACK, the former NASDAQ ticker symbol for Silicon Graphics International, formerly called Rackable Systems * Risk-aware consensual kink * RACK1 Receptor for activated C kinase 1 (RACK1), also known as guanine nucleotide-bindi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Food Web
A food web is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation of what-eats-what in an ecological community. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs. To maintain their bodies, grow, develop, and to reproduce, autotrophs produce organic matter from inorganic substances, including both minerals and gases such as carbon dioxide. These chemical reactions require energy, which mainly comes from the Sun and largely by photosynthesis, although a very small amount comes from bioelectrogenesis in wetlands, and mineral electron donors in hydrothermal vents and hot springs. These trophic levels are not binary, but form a gradient that includes complete autotrophs, which obtain their sole source of carbon from the atmosphere, mixotrophs (such as carnivorous plants), which are autotrophic organisms that partially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seawall
A seawall (or sea wall) is a form of coastal defense constructed where the sea, and associated coastal processes, impact directly upon the landforms of the coast. The purpose of a seawall is to protect areas of human habitation, conservation and leisure activities from the action of tides, waves, or tsunamis. As seawall is a static feature it will conflict with the dynamic nature of the coast and impede the exchange of sediment between land and sea. Seawall designs factor in local climate, coastal position, wave regime (determined by wave characteristics and effectors), and value (morphological characteristics) of landform. Seawalls are hard engineering shore-based structures which protect the coast from erosion. Various environmental issues may arise from the construction of a seawall, including the disruption of sediment movement and transport patterns. Combined with a high construction cost, this has led to an increasing use of other soft engineering coastal management o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bioaccumulation
Bioaccumulation is the gradual accumulation of substances, such as pesticides or other chemicals, in an organism. Bioaccumulation occurs when an organism absorbs a substance at a rate faster than that at which the substance is lost or eliminated by catabolism and excretion. Thus, the longer the biological half-life of a toxic substance, the greater the risk of chronic poisoning, even if environmental levels of the toxin are not very high. Bioaccumulation, for example in fish, can be predicted by models. Hypothesis for molecular size cutoff criteria for use as bioaccumulation potential indicators are not supported by data. Biotransformation can strongly modify bioaccumulation of chemicals in an organism. Toxicity induced by metals is associated with bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Storage or uptake of metals faster than the rate at which an organism metabolizes and excretes lead to the accumulation of that metal. The presence of various chemicals and harmful substances in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albatross Carcass And Marine Debris
Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large seabirds related to the procellariids, storm petrels, and diving petrels in the order Procellariiformes (the tubenoses). They range widely in the Southern Ocean and the North Pacific. They are absent from the North Atlantic, although fossil remains show they once occurred there and occasional vagrants are found. Albatrosses are among the largest of flying birds, and species of the genus ''Diomedea'' (great albatrosses) have the longest wingspans of any extant birds, reaching up to . The albatrosses are usually regarded as falling into four genera, but disagreement exists over the number of species. Albatrosses are highly efficient in the air, using dynamic soaring and slope soaring to cover great distances with little exertion. They feed on squid, fish, and krill by either scavenging, surface seizing, or diving. Albatrosses are colonial, nesting for the most part on remote oceanic islands, often with several species ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dune
A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat regions covered with wind-swept sand or dunes with little or no vegetation are called ''ergs'' or ''sand seas''. Dunes occur in different shapes and sizes, but most kinds of dunes are longer on the stoss (upflow) side, where the sand is pushed up the dune, and have a shorter ''slip face'' in the lee side. The valley or trough between dunes is called a ''dune slack''. Dunes are most common in desert environments, where the lack of moisture hinders the growth of vegetation that would otherwise interfere with the development of dunes. However, sand deposits are not restricted to deserts, and dunes are also found along sea shores, along streams in semiarid climates, in areas of glacial outwash, and in other areas where poorly cemented sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oviparity
Oviparous animals are animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive method of most fish, amphibians, most reptiles, and all pterosaurs, dinosaurs (including birds), and monotremes. In traditional usage, most insects (one being ''Culex pipiens'', or the common house mosquito), molluscs, and arachnids are also described as oviparous. Modes of reproduction The traditional modes of reproduction include oviparity, taken to be the ancestral condition, traditionally where either unfertilised oocytes or fertilised eggs are spawned, and viviparity traditionally including any mechanism where young are born live, or where the development of the young is supported by either parent in or on any part of their body. However, the biologist Thierry Lodé recently divided the traditional category of oviparous reproduction into two modes that he named ovuliparity and (true) oviparity respectively. He distinguished the tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coelopa Pilipes
''Coelopa pilipes'' (common name kelp fly or seaweed fly) is a common European species of kelp fly. It was described by A. H. Haliday in 1838. Their appearance differs greatly from that of other ''Coelopa'' flies. ''C. pilipes'' are especially prevalent in European beaches. Year-round, these flies live in washed-up kelp on wrack zones of beaches before adulthood and consume the decaying kelp, mostly of the genera ''Laminaria'' and ''Fucus'' that have a great impact on the flies' survival. Female flies lay eggs in the decaying seaweed, and larvae mature in the warm, moist environment it provides. ''C. pilipes'' has significant sympatry with '' C. frigida''; the two flies are often studied together due to their overlapping habitats and distribution. Morphology In general, seaweed flies are dark-colored, small or medium-sized flies with hairs or bristles. Darker color makes the adults more distinguishable from other species, but larvae are less easily identified. Adult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kelp Fly
Kelp fly is one common name of species of flies in a number of Taxonomic rank#Ranks in zoology, families of "true Fly, flies" or Fly, Diptera. They generally feed on stranded and rotting seaweed, particularly kelp in the wrack zone. When conditions are suitable they are very numerous and may be ecologically important in the turnover of organic material on the coast.Griffiths C. L.,Stenton-Dozey J. M. E.,Koop K.,1983, Kelp wrack and energy flow through a sandy beach. Sandy beaches as ecosystems, A. McLachlan & T. Erasmus (eds.), W. Junk,The Hague,547–556 In this role they also may be an important item in the diet of beach-dwelling animals and birds. The flies most generally referred to as kelp flies are the widely distributed Coelopidae, such as ''Coelopa pilipes''. In popular speech however, they are not clearly distinguished from other flies with similar feeding habits, such as the Heterocheilidae, the Helcomyzidae, Helcomyzinae and sundry members of the Anthomyiidae.McAlpine, J. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rove Beetle
The rove beetles are a family (Staphylinidae) of beetles, primarily distinguished by their short elytra (wing covers) that typically leave more than half of their abdominal segments exposed. With roughly 63,000 species in thousands of genera, the group is currently recognized as the largest extant family of organisms. It is an ancient group, with fossilized rove beetles known from the Triassic, 200 million years ago, and possibly even earlier if the genus ''Leehermania'' proves to be a member of this family. They are an ecologically and morphologically diverse group of beetles, and commonly encountered in terrestrial ecosystems. One well-known species is the devil's coach-horse beetle. For some other species, see list of British rove beetles. Anatomy As might be expected for such a large family, considerable variation exists among the species. Sizes range from <1 to , with most in the 2–8 mm range, and the form is generally elongated, with some rove beetles being ovoid i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polychaete
Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class (biology), class of generally marine invertebrate, marine annelid worms, common name, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin. More than 10,000 species are described in this class. Common representatives include the lugworm (''Arenicola marina'') and the Alitta virens, sandworm or Alitta succinea, clam worm ''Alitta''. Polychaetes as a class are robust and widespread, with species that live in the coldest ocean temperatures of the abyssal plain, to forms which tolerate the extremely high temperatures near hydrothermal vents. Polychaetes occur throughout the Earth's oceans at all depths, from forms that live as plankton near the surface, to a 2- to 3-cm specimen (still unclassified) observed by the robot ocean probe Nereus (underwater vehicle), ''Nereus'' at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphipoda
Amphipoda is an order of malacostracan crustaceans with no carapace and generally with laterally compressed bodies. Amphipods range in size from and are mostly detritivores or scavengers. There are more than 9,900 amphipod species so far described. They are mostly marine animals, but are found in almost all aquatic environments. Some 1,900 species live in fresh water, and the order also includes the terrestrial sandhoppers such as ''Talitrus saltator''. Etymology and names The name ''Amphipoda'' comes, via New Latin ', from the Greek roots 'on both/all sides' and 'foot'. This contrasts with the related Isopoda, which have a single kind of thoracic leg. Particularly among anglers, amphipods are known as ''freshwater shrimp'', ''scuds'', or ''sideswimmers''. Description Anatomy The body of an amphipod is divided into 13 segments, which can be grouped into a head, a thorax and an abdomen. The head is fused to the thorax, and bears two pairs of antennae and one pair of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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