Benthic Communities

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Benthic Communities

• living along the bottom of the ocean

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Benthic Communities

• living along the bottom of the ocean

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Benthic Communities

• Rocky Intertidal Zones
• Coral Reefs

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Rocky Intertidal Zones
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Rocky Intertidal Zones

• Hard places to live
• Drying out during low tide
• Close shells, move to moist areas
• Wave Shock
• Have holdfasts, cement, tube feet
• Lack of space to hold on
• competition
• Rapid changes in temperature salinity
• Close shells or be able to withstand it

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Table 15.1
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Coral Reefs

• Corals
• Are animals (Cnidarians)
• Small (ant-sized) polyps live in large colonies
• Hermatypic corals secret a calcium carbonate
  skeletonthe reef

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Coral Reefs

• Zooxanthellae
• Dinoflagellate that lives within the coral polyp
• A mutualism
• Algae provide food, speeds up calcium carbonate
  deposition get nutrients in return

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Coral Reefs

• Hermatypic Corals ideal habitat is 5-10 m (16-33
  ft) depth temperatures warmer than 18-21oC
  (64-70oF)

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Fig. 14-12, p. 294
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Coral Reefs

• Reefs support a large diversity of other
  organisms
• Home to 25 of the worlds marine species

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Symbiosis

• the co-occurrence of two species in which the
  life of one is closely tied with the life of
  another

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Symbiosis

• Three types
• mutualism ()
• Anemone fish, cleaner shrimp or wrasse,
  zooxanthellae
• commensalism (0)
• pea crabs, remoras shark, whale barnacles
• parasitism (-)
• isopods, roundworms, etc.

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Figure 14.15b
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Figure 10 p.221
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Figure 14.15a
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Figure 14.15c