Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:06:30.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What, if anything, is a brackish-water fauna?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

R. S. K. Barnes
R. S. K. Barnes
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The nature of the fauna of brackish-water environments is reviewed. It is concluded that: (a) a specific brackish-water macrofauna does not exist; (b) in salinities of >c. 5-8‰ the fauna is one that also occurs in soft sediments under fully marine conditions when circumstances (possibly the absence of competing species) permit; (c) in salinities of <c. 5‰ the fauna is essentially a freshwater one; and (d) inability to cope physiologically with brackish water is not a factor of major importance in limiting species diversity in these habitats, except in the vicinity of 5‰ salinity. Caution is therefore advised in assigning brackish status to past environments on the basis of their preserved fauna.

Keywords

ecologyestuariesfaunal diversitylagoonspalaeoecologyphysiologyspecies composition
Type
Physiological adaptations in some recent and fossil organisms
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 80 , Issue 3-4: Environments and Physiology of Fossil Organisms , 1989 , pp. 235 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anon, 1958. Final resolution: the Venice system for the classification of marine waters according to salinity. In Symposium on the Classification of Brackish Waters. Venice: Societas Internationalis Limnologiae.Google Scholar
Bambach, R. K. 1977. Species richness in marine benthic habitats through the Phanerozoic. PALEOBIOLOGY 3, 152–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, R. S. K. 1968. On the affinities of three fossil ocypodid crabs and their relevance to the time and place of origin of the genus Macrophthalmus (Brachyura: Ocypodidae). J ZOOL LONDON 154, 333–339.Google Scholar
Barnes, R. S. K. 1977. Concluding contribution towards a revision of, and a key to, the genus Macrophthalmus (Crustacea: Brachyura). J ZOOL LONDON 182, 267–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, R. S. K. 1980. Coastal Lagoons. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, R. S. K. 1984. Estuarine Biology, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Barnes, R. S. K. & Hughes, R. N. 1988. An Introduction to Marine Ecology, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.Google Scholar
Boyden, C. R. & Little, C. 1973. Faunal distributions in soft sediments of the Severn Estuary. EST COAST MAR SCI 1, 203–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couper, A. (ed.) 1983. The Times Atlas of the Oceans. London: Times Books.Google Scholar
Davies, J. L. 1972. Geographical Variation in Coastal Development. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd.Google Scholar
Deaton, L. E. & Greenberg, M. J. 1986. There is no Horohalinicum. ESTUARIES 9, 20–30.Google Scholar
Eldredge, N. 1986. Time Frames. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Green, J. 1968. The Biology of Estuarine Animals. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.Google Scholar
Hiscock, K. 1986. Surveys of harbours, rias and estuaries in southern Britain: Salcombe Harbour and the Kingsbridge Estuary. A Report to the Nature Conservancy Council. Orielton, Field Studies Council Oil Pollution Research Unit. Report FSC/OPRU/40/85.Google Scholar
Hudson, J. D. 1963. The recognition of salinity controlled mollusc assemblages in the Great Estuarine Series (Middle Jurassic) of the Inner Hebrides. PALAEONTOLOGY 6, 318–326.Google Scholar
Jablonski, D., Sepkoski, J. J. Jr, Bottjer, D. J. & Sheehan, P. M. 1983. Onshore–offshore patterns in the evolution of Phanerozoic shelf communities. SCIENCE NEW YORK 222, 1123–1125.Google Scholar
Jackson, J. B. C. 1974. Biogeographic consequences of eurytopy and stenotopy among marine bivalves and their evolutionary significance. AM NAT 108, 541–560.Google Scholar
Kauffman, E. G. 1978. Evolutionary rates and patterns among Cretaceous Bivalvia PHILOS TRANS R SOC LONDON B284, 277–304.Google Scholar
Khlebovich, V. V. 1968. Some peculiar features of the hydrochemical regime and the fauna of mesohaline waters. MAR BIOL 2, 47–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, C. 1983. The Colonisation of Land. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marine Biological Association 1957. Plymouth Marine Fauna, 3rd edn. Plymouth: Marine Biological Association of the U.K.Google Scholar
Muus, B. J. 1967. The fauna of Danish estuaries and lagoons. Distribution and ecology of dominating species in the shallow reaches of the mesohaline zone. MEDD DAN FISK-OG HAVUNDERS (NY SER) 5, 1–316.Google Scholar
Ono, Y. 1962. On the habitat preference of ocypoid crabs. MEM FAC SCI KYUSHU UNIV (E) 3, 143–163.Google Scholar
Pora, E. 1946. Problèmes de physiologie animale dans le Mer Noire. BULL INST OCÉANOGR MONACO 93, 1–43.Google Scholar
Reise, K. 1985. Tidal Flat Ecology. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Remane, A. 1934. Die Brackwasserfauna. VERH DTSCH ZOOL GES 36, 34–74.Google Scholar
Remane, A. 1971. Ecology of brackish water. In Remane, A. & Schlieper, C. (eds) Biology of Brackish Water, 2nd (English) edn., 1–210. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart'sche.Google Scholar
Rygg, B. 1970. Studies on Cerastoderma edule (L.) and Cerastoderma glaucum (Poiret). SARSIA 43, 65–80.Google Scholar
Schlieper, C. 1971. Physiology of brackish water. In Remane, A. & Schlieper, C. (eds) Biology of Brackish Water, 2nd (English) edn., 211–350. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart'sche.Google Scholar
Sepkoski, J. J. Jr & Miller, A. I. 1985. Evolutionary faunas and the distribution of Paleozoic marine communities in space and time. In Valentine, J. W. (ed.) Phanerozoic Diversity Patterns: Profiles in Macroevolution, 153–190. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Steers, J. A. (ed.) 1960. Scolt Head Island, 2nd edn. Cambridge; Heffers.Google Scholar
Taylor, J. 1978. Present day. In McKerrow, W. S. (ed.) The Ecology of Fossils, 352–364. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Thorson, G. 1957. Bottom communities (sublittoral and shallow shelf). In Hedgpeth, J. W. (ed.) Treatise on Marine Ecology and Paleoecology 1 Ecology, 461–534. New York: Geological Society of America.Google Scholar
Valentine, J. W. 1973. Evolutionary Paleoecology of the Marine Biosphere. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Wolff, W. J. 1973. The estuary as a habitat. An analysis of data on the soft-bottom macrofauna of the estuarine area of the rivers Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt. ZOOL VERH LEIDEN 126.Google Scholar
Wolff, W. J. 1977. A benthic food budget for the Grevelingen Estuary, The Netherlands, and a consideration of the mechanisms causing high benthic secondary production in estuaries. In Coull, B. C. (ed.) Ecology of Marine Benthos, 267–280. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Zenkevitch, L. 1963. Biology of the Seas of the U.S.S.R., English edn. London: Allen & Unwin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar