Concentrations of zinc and copper have been measured in 18 species of decapod crustaceans, ranging from freshwater to purely marine species. Although the intake of zinc and copper probably varies considerably, the majority of animals contain between 20 and 35 μg/g of both metals. This is probably because the concentrations in the body fluids and tissues are regulated. Reasons for differences between the concentrations of zinc and copper in the individual tissues of different species are discussed and the ways in which regulation is achieved are compared.

Apart from a few scattered observations (Hensen, 1887; Gran, 1902) the study of the food of Calanus began with Dakin (1908). He examined the remains present in the gut, and this was the method used also by Esterly (1916), Lebour (1922) and Marshall (1924). They all found that these remains consisted of a greenish mush containing the skeletons of numerous planktonic organisms, chiefly diatoms and dinoflagellates. Naked flagellates were, how-ever, occasionally seen, and it was realized that the food might in reality consist largely of organisms which had no skeleton and could leave no recognizable remains.

Reproductive cycles are determined from samples taken at regular intervals over a period of time related to the assumed periodicity of the breeding cycle. Fiscal, ship time and sampling constraints have made this almost impossible at deep-sea vents and seeps, but there is an accumulating mass of data that cast light on these processes. It is becoming apparent that most reproductive processes are phylogenetically conservative, even in extreme vent and seep habitats. Reproductive patterns of species occurring at vents and seeps are not dissimilar to those of species from the same phyla found in non-chemosynthetic environments. The demographic structure of most vent and seep animals is undescribed and the maximum ages and growth rates are not known. We know little about how the gametogenic cycle is initiated, though there is a growing body of data on the size at first reproduction. Gametogenic biology has been described from seasonal samples for only one organism from vent/seep environments. For other species, the pattern of gametogenesis has been described from serendipitous samples that allow determination of reproductive effort, but such samples reveal little about energy partitioning during the gametogenic process. Some notable adaptations have been described in mature gametes, including modified sperm. Spawning has been observed for a number of species both in situ and in vitro. Knowledge of the larvae of vent/seep organisms has been derived from laboratory fertilizations, from field collections over vent and seep areas and, for molluscs, from protoconch or prodissoconch size and shape. Larval dispersal has been perhaps the most intractable aspect of reproduction. Because the length of larval life is known for only a single seep organism and no vent organism, we cannot infer dispersal distance from a knowledge of current velocities. Modelling has been used to assess the maximum larval distance that allows effective migration between vent sectors. An indirect approach has been to estimate gene flow within, and between, vent sites using DNA sequencing and electrophoretic techniques. Although data are still equivocal, there are indications of considerable mixing among populations within and between vent sectors of the same ridge. Our knowledge of reproductive biology in vent and seep organisms remains fragmentary, but with molecular and biochemical techniques, emerging larval culture techniques, and increased sampling effort, the pieces of the jigsaw will eventually form an overall picture.

The absorption of zinc has been studied in the brown seaweed Laminaria digitata (Huds.) Lamour., with use of the radionuclide 65Zn and atomic absorption analysis. No evidence of the regulation of zinc by the plant has been found. Absorption of zinc or 65Zn is a gradual process of accumulation which may continue throughout the life of the plant and is not accompanied by the exchange of zinc. As a result, once it has been absorbed, zinc or 65Zn shows little tendency to be lost from the plant. The amounts of zinc or 65Zn which can be accumulated from sea water containing different concentrations of zinc and the effects on these of growth, light and competition from other metals have been studied. Possible sites at which zinc might be bound have been discussed, and the experimental results have been compared with the situation found in the field.

The accumulation from sea water of 65Zn, 54Mn, 59Fe and 58Co by the mussel, Mytilus edulis, has been studied in relation to the stable element levels of these isotopes both in the sea water and in individual tissues. For all four radionuclides the greatest accumulation occurred in the stomach and digestive gland samples and further localization of 65Zn and 69Fe was demonstrated by autoradiography. As the animals were starved during the accumulation period the loss of stable elements by individual tissues was also followed. Again the most notable effect occurred in the digestive gland tissues with the exception of a large loss of iron by the foot. Autoradiography showed that after two weeks accumulation 59Fe occurs in large clusters in the foot, notable in the byssus gland area. These clusters disappear after a further two week period and may thus be secreted into new byssus threads.

The observations to be recorded in this Paper were commenced in March, 1905. They originated in an attempt to find a general method for rearing marine larval forms. Several investigators had previously succeeded in rearing Echinoderms, Molluscs, and Polychætes from artificially fertilized eggs under laboratory conditions, but the process was generally difficult and the results more or less uncertain. The most promising method seemed to be that adopted by Caswell Grave (26), who was able to rear his larvæ by feeding them on diatoms. Grave obtained his diatoms by placing sand, collected from the sea bottom, in aquaria and using such diatoms as developed from this material. All the methods, however, suffered from the uncertainty of not knowing what organisms were introduced into the aquaria in which the larvse were to be reared, either in the original sea-water or along with the food-supply.

The stomach contents of ten species of elasmobranch from the north-eastern Atlantic indicate that most are generalist predators, eating a variety of polychaetes, molluscs, crustaceans and teleosts. Two species, Mustelus asterias and Squatina scjuatina were found to be specialist feeders, consuming portunid crabs and pleuronectids, respectively. Measures for both dietary breadth and dietary overlap are given and the implications of elasmobranch predation on the prey communities and on commercial species are discussed.

Although the nitrogenous excretory products of a number of marine bivalve molluscs have been identified (Hammen, Miller & Geer, 1966; Hammen, 1968; Emerson, 1969; Allen & Garrett, 1971; Bayne, 1973 a) and average values for rates of nitrogen excretion recorded for some species (Lum & Hammen, 1964; Hammen et al. 1966; Bayne, 1973a), there is little information available on the ways in which environmental factors may affect either the balance between the various nitrogenous end-products, or their rates of excretion. The most thorough investigations have dealt with the effects of reduced salinity, which causes an increase in the rates of excretion of ammonia by Macoma inconspicua (Emerson, 1969), Mya arenaria (Allen & Garrett, 1971) and Mytilus edulis (Bayne, 1975). Dilution of the medium is also known to accelerate the loss of amino acids from the body, as part of the mechanism of volume regulation (Pierce & Greenberg, 1972, 1973). There is some evidence of altered rates of excretion during starvation (Hammen, 1968; Emerson, 1969; Bayne, 1973 a, b) and differences in excretion rate due to differences in animal size have been documented for Donax vittatus by Ansell & Sivadas (1973) and for Mytilus californianus by Bayne, Bayne, Carefoot & Thompson (1976 a, b).

Trace metals are accumulated by marine invertebrates to body concentrations higher, in many cases orders of magnitude higher, than the concentrations in an equivalent weight of the surrounding sea-water (Eisler, 1981; Rainbow, 1990; Phillips & Rainbow, 1993). Specific details of trace metal accumulation processes vary within the same invertebrate species between metals, and for the same trace metal between invertebrates, often between closely related species (Rainbow, 1990, 1993). This short review attempts to highlight some of the comparative aspects of the processes involved that are expected and explicable in terms of the chemistry of the respective elements, and those where the physiology of the species involved intervenes to offset predictions from purely chemical principles. Although an appreciation of trace metal chemistry is crucial to an understanding of trace metal accumulation, idiosyncrasies in the biology of the invertebrate (at any taxon level) may intervene to bring about significant and unexpected comparative differences in metal accumulation patterns.

Many aspects of the food web in the sea are ill understood: none more than the quantitative aspects of the heterotrophic activity of micro-organisms. Heterotrophic utilization of dissolved organic material by micro-organisms was recognized and discussed in principle by such workers as ZoBell, Waksman and Rakestraw in the thirties. There has been very little subsequent progress in understanding the details of the process, principally because of the lack of a suitable approach. Parsons and Strickland (1961) revived interest in this field when they introduced a simple radiochemical technique to follow the uptake of individual soluble organic compounds; subsequently Williams & Askew (1968) developed a method to measure the respiration of such compounds in sea-water samples.

Following the researches on the food of young fishes, it was thought advisable to investigate the food of the planktonic invertebrates. Whenever possible, therefore, the food of the larger animals brought in by the tow-nets was noted, and also that of many of the smaller creatures down to some of the unicellular organisms, such as the tintinnids and those members of the Peridiniales which are holozoic.

With the larger animals it was hoped to find which of them actually ate the young fishes, and by investigating their food in general ascertain how much they were actually competitors with the fishes.

The present work is offered as a preliminary, and it is hoped to continue it, following it up especially with more experimental work on the living animals.

The tow-nettings were examined fresh and the food noted. Sometimes a few hours elapsed between the taking of the sample and the examination, so that some of the catch was moribund in the jar. There is always the objection that the food might have been taken in the jar whilst the plankton was being brought in, and it is a matter of general observation that many medusæ and various pelagic animals will devour young fishes and almost anything living when crowded up with them in the hauls. In many of the organisms examined, however, the nature of the food was so consistent in various hauls and from various localities that it seems almost impossible to believe that it is merely accidental, and it is probable that what food one usually finds inside any planktonic animal is natural to it.

Pelagic eggs and demersal eggs of teleosts both have osmotic concentrations similar to that of the maternal body fluids, less than half that of sea water. Pelagic eggs are buoyant because they contain such large quantities of this dilute aqueous fluid. While the demersal eggs of teleosts usually have a water content of 60–70%, the buoyant pelagic eggs of marine teleosts such as whiting, Norway pout, saithe, cod, haddock, turbot, dab, plaice, witch, long rough dab, halibut and sole typically have a very high water content (ca. 92 %) and a lipid content of 10–17% of egg dry weight. About 90% of the buoyancy of such eggs in sea water is caused by their high aqueous content, only about 10% being caused by lipid. The buoyant eggs of grenadier and ling have large oil globules and higher lipid contents, 27 and 35 % of dry weight respectively. Nevertheless, most of their buoyancy is provided by their high aqueous contents (89 and 81 % water). The high water content of pelagic eggs is brought about by a massive influx of water into the oocytes during meiotic maturation (ripening) after vitellogenesis but before ovulation. In cod and plaice, ripening is accompanied by a four- to five-fold increase in both water content and free amino-acids, and by a large influx of both potassium and sodium. In cod, free amino-acids contribute much more than these inorganic ions to the water influx and to the total osmotic concentration of the mature egg, but in plaice the relative contribution of inorganic ions approaches that of the free amino-acids.

The importance of the extensive intertidal mud-flats to the energy budget of estuaries has frequently been stressed, but seldom quantified. Smidt (1951) has discussed the production of both macro- and meiofauna from the Danish Waddens in general terms but, because of the wide coverage, his information is not detailed enough to quantify annual production in terms of g/m2. The present study was designed to compare the productive importance of macrofauna and meiofauna in detail at a single site. This paper deals only with the first phase of this study, the macrofauna, which are retained on a 0.5 mm sieve for the major part of their productive life.

INTRODUCTION

It has been known for a long time that the soft tissues of molluscs contain relatively high concentrations of certain trace elements—mainly transition metals (see, for example, Vinogradov, 1953; Bowen, 1966). However, with the exception of the work by Brooks & Rumsby (1965) on the occurrence of 12 elements in 3 New Zealand bivalves, most of the investigations have concerned the distribution of only one or two elements. This has prevented a study being made of possible interelement correlations. The present work was carried out in an endeavour to determine the usual levels of several minor elements in a variety of molluscs from the Irish Sea and to seek evidence for such correlations.

Shade plots, simple visual representations of abundance matrices from multivariate species assemblage studies, are shown to be an effective aid in choosing an overall transformation (or other pre-treatment) of quantitative data for long-term use, striking an appropriate balance between dominant and less abundant taxa in ensuing resemblance-based multivariate analyses. Though the exposition is entirely general and applicable to all community studies, detailed illustrations of the comparative power and interpretative possibilities of shade plots are given in the case of two estuarine assemblage studies in south-western Australia: (a) macrobenthos in the upper Swan Estuary over a two-year period covering a highly significant precipitation event for the Perth area; and (b) a wide-scale spatial study of the nearshore fish fauna from five divergent estuaries. The utility of transformations of intermediate severity is again demonstrated and, with greater novelty, the potential importance seen of further mild transformation of all data after differential down-weighting (dispersion weighting) of spatially ‘clumped’ or ‘schooled’ species. Among the new techniques utilized is a two-way form of the RELATE test, which demonstrates linking of assemblage structure (fish) to continuous environmental variables (water quality), having removed a categorical factor (estuary differences). Re-orderings of sample and species axes in the associated shade plots are seen to provide transparent explanations at the species level for such continuous multivariate patterns.

predator–prey interactions between fish and macrofauna in kelp (laminaria hyperboea) forest were examined. fish were caught in gill-nets and fish traps at two sites and throughout the diurnal cycle. their stomach contents were analysed. the most abundant fish species, except pollachius virens, were caught in larger numbers at night than during daytime. the examined fish fed throughout the diurnal cycle and kelp-associated fauna were found to be important prey. pollachius virens was caught in the same numbers throughout the diurnal cycle and contained mainly pelagic prey, in larger numbers during the day than at night. small labrids were specialists, feeding mainly on the two numerically dominant kelp-associated gastropods rissoa parva and lacuna vincta. the larger labrus bergylta, gadus morhua and myoxocephalus scorpius were generalists, feeding on a large range of kelp-associated invertebrates. some fish species showed preference for particular vertical levels when feeding in the kelp forest. the most mobile and/or the largest invertebrates were most heavily preyed upon.

The Preliminary Check-list of British Marine Algae (Parke, 1953), with three subsequent lists of additions and corrections (Parke, 1956, 1957, 1959), was superseded by the Revised Check-list of British Marine Algae (Parke & Dixon, 1964). Since the publication of the latter, changes, both taxonomic and systematic, have been sufficiently numerous to warrant the present list incorporating additions, corrections and emendations.

The authors take full responsibility for all the changes from the 1964 Check-list. The responsibility for the preparation of the lists of species for each Class in the 1964 Check-list was as follows: (1) Cyanophyceae, H. T. Powell; (2) Rhodophyceae, P. S. Dixon; (3) Cryptophyceae, M. Parke; (4) Dinophyceae, D. Ballantine & M. Parke; (5) Haptophyceae, M. Parke; (6) Chrysophyceae, M. Parke; (7) Craspedophyceae, M. Parke; (8) Xanthophyceae, M. Parke; (9) Phaeophyceae, H. Bladder, G. Russell, P. S. Dixon & M. Parke; (10) Prasinophyceae, M. Parke; (11) Chlorophyceae, E. M. Burrows, P. S. Dixon & M. Parke.

The sequences of classes is as in the 1964 Check-list and there have been no changes in the geographical limits used therein (the coasts of Britain and Ireland or in adjacent waters, i.e. the sea area bounded by 47° N. and 63° N., 11° E. and 30° W.). Three classes (Bacillariophyceae, Rhaphidophyceae, Euglenophyceae) are still not represented and the authors would be grateful for records of marine species of these in order to facilitate their inclusion at some time in the future.

The compilers welcome any comments on the Revised Check-list (1964) or the present list.

In nature, organisms are subjected to a variety of environmental factors acting together and they respond to the total resulting stimulus rather than to single environmental variables. In addition, the animal's response is not in terms of individual physiological rates but rather as a whole organism. Therefore an experimental approach to an animal's response to a complex environment could usefully include (a) multivariate experiments and (b) integration of individual physiological processes to provide a greater under-standing of the ‘whole organism’ response. In this paper, non-linear multiple regression equations and response surfaces are used to describe and illustrate the combined effects on the common mussel, Mytilus edulis L., of body size, ration and season on physio-logical integrations such as the scope for growth, growth efficiency and the oxygen: nitrogen ratio (reviewed by Bayne, 1975; Bayne, Widdows & Thompson, 1976). The data used to compute these physiological integrations are derived from a series of multivariate experiments described in a preceding paper (Widdows, 1978).

This is the first comprehensive check-list of the diatoms of the British Isles to cover all currently reported taxa from freshwater, brackish and marine habitats. It contains a classification of the genera in order of families, followed by a complete list of species and lower taxa set out in alphabetical order within each genus.

The two main orders of the British Diatomaceae are represented in:- 5 sub-orders, 20 families, 3 sub-families, 152 genera, 1798 species, 6 sub-species, 745 varieties and 73 forms.

The check-list also includes 2048 synonyms formerly in common use, together with 512 cross references to the names of taxa in current use.

A number of procedures are now available for calculating the effects of ionic inter-actions on the behaviour of solutions as complex as sea water (Whitfield, 1973 a). These procedures are able to give a good account of the properties of the major electrolyte components (Leyendekkers, 1973 a; Robinson & Wood, 1972; Whitfield, 19736) and of the colligative properties of sea water (Robinson & Wood, 1972; Whitfield, 1973 c, d). However, greatest interest centres around the possibility of predicting the effects of these major components on the multitude of ionic equilibria that influence the properties of the less abundant constituents that are of greater biological and geological importance. It is here that the newer approaches to marine chemistry are weakest because suitable thermodynamic data are lacking. One system of practical importance that can be studied using a variety of theoretical approaches is the acid ionization of ammonium ions represented by the equation The toxicity of ammonium salts to freshwater life has been shown to be strongly dependent on the pH in a manner that is consistent with un-ionized ammonia (NH3) being the most lethal fraction (see, for example, Wuhrmann & Woker, 1948; Downing & Merkens, 1955; Lloyd & Herbert, i960; Hemens, 1966; and Brown, 1968). These papers and many others have been thoroughly reviewed (EIFAC Technical Paper no. 11, 1970, Kemp, Abrams & Overbeck, 1971). The free base (NH3) has a relatively high lipid solubility because it carries no charge and is therefore able to diffuse quite readily across cell membranes (Fromm & Gillette, 1968).