2005 Joyce et al. Sussex records of Ficopomatus enigmaticus
Coastal water bodies are a heterogeneous resource typified by high spatial and temporal variability and threatened by anthropogenic impacts. This includes saline lagoons, which support a specialist biota and are a priority habitat for nature conservation. This paper describes the biotic variation in coastal water bodies in Sussex, England, in order to characterise the distinctiveness of the saline lagoon community and elucidate environmental factors that determine its distribution. Twenty-eight coastal water bodies were surveyed for their aquatic flora and invertebrate fauna and a suite of exploratory environmental variables compiled. Ordination and cluster analyses were used to examine patterns in community composition and relate these to environmental parameters. Biotic variation in the coastal water body resource was high. Salinity was the main environmental parameter explaining the regional distribution of taxa; freshwater and saline assemblages were evident and related to sea water ingress. Freshwater sites were indicated by the plant Myriophyllum spicatum and gastropod mollusc Lymnaea peregra, while more saline communities supported marine and brackish water taxa, notably a range of chlorophytic algae and the bivalve mollusc Cerastoderma glaucum. Site community differences were also related to bank slope and parameters describing habitat heterogeneity. A saline lagoon community was discerned within the matrix of biotic variation consisting of specialist lagoonal species with associated typically euryhaline taxa. For fauna, the latter were the molluscs Abra tenuis and Hydrobia ulvae, and the crustaceans Corophium volutator and Palaemonetes varians, and for flora they were the algae Ulva lactuca, Chaetomorpha mediterranea, Cladophora spp. and Enteromorpha intestinalis. One non-native polychaete species, Ficopomatus enigmaticus, also strongly influenced community structure within the lagoonal resource. The community was not well defined as specialist and associated taxa were distributed throughout the spectrum of sites surveyed. Implications for the identification and conservation of saline lagoons are discussed.
dataset
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name: DASSH homepage
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DASSHDT00000174
http://www.dassh.ac.uk
eng
urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326
biota
revision
2008-01-06
revision
2009-11-16
-0.9541
-0.7090
50.8684
50.7478
creation
2009-06-18
Eastern Channel
creation
1954-01-01
English Channel
revision
2010-01-01
infralittoral
revision
2010-01-01
littoral
creation
2014-05-16
VIId
2001-06-18
2001-09-18
publication
2005-09-01
notPlanned
Part of MSFD NNS baseline data collation project (Jan 2016). Subset of a dataset as we were only pulling out records for a selection of INNS. Contains records for Ficopomatus enigmaticus.
DASSH terms and conditions apply
DASSH terms and conditions apply
Researcher
University of Sussex Centre for Coastal Research
originator
Data Manager
Data Archive for Seabed Species and Habitats (DASSH)
Marine Biological Association of the UK, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill
Plymouth
PL1 2PB
01752 633102
01752 633291
custodian
DASSH, The Archive for Marine Species and Habitat Data
pointOfContact
2018-01-19