Biology Coursework – Rocky Shore Ecology

Posted by John Blatchford Nov 12, 2008

I have just written an article about the identification of winkles and seaweeds during marine fieldwork, and some of my earlier articles and blogs looked at topics such as the tides, zonation, and the rocky sea shore in general. There are also a couple of articles with specific instructions about how to do a rocky shore transect, and how use your results to draw kite diagrams.

How to Explain Zonation

Two of the commonest organisms surveyed during marine shore fieldwork are the winkles and the seaweeds.

• Winkle zonation can be explained by a combination of factors, such as feeding habits and the reproductive biology of the different species. To do this properly you will need to search through the literature.

• Seaweed zonation is similarly explained by a combination of factors, but here there is the opportunity to carry out simple laboratory experiments – maybe hanging samples of the various species in a dry atmosphere and weighing them at intervals? Maybe experimental results could confirm that species found low down on the shore lose water more rapidly than species that live in the splash zone.

If you have any queries about this type of coursework you could either comment on one of these articles, or simply email me directly. Similarly, if you think it would be useful if I wrote another article about some other aspect of rocky shore ecology, you could either comment or email.