NOTES
Links to summaries of key issues for each topic
VISUALS
Links to images employed in lectures on a topic-by-topic basis
TEXT
Link to chapter outlines at online learning center at McGraw Hill.
NOTES
Links to summaries of key issues for each topic
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Marine Animals and Communities
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Notes on Topic:
The notes represent summaries
of key issues for each topic
They emphasize the terminology used to
describe the various phenomena.
| 1. Characteristics of Marine Animals: |
| Learning Objectives: |
- Comprehension of habitats and lifestyle of marine animals
- Understanding of characteristics and feeding strategies of marine
animals
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| Marine Mammals: |
- Warm-blooded, air-breathing, include herbivores
- Cetaceans: whales, dolphins, porpoises
- baleen whales filter feed on phytoplankton
- includes most great whales
- toothed whales eat fish, or crustacea
- some whales are migratory (grey whale, humpback)
- whale explotation and harvesting 'til moratorium
- use echo-location to locate prey
- high and low frequency clicks emitted
- Pinnipeds:
- seals, walruses, sea lions with flippers
- Others:
- sea otters; sea cows (manatees, dugongs)
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| Seabirds: |
- Nest on land, near ocean food source
- Variety of lifestyles and foods;
- wading: (herons, egrets)
- diving: pelicans, cormorants
- oceanic: albatross, petrels
- swimming: penguins (flightless)
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| Marine Reptiles: |
- Sea turtles:
- herbivores that live in the ocean
- nest on land, migratory
- Others:
- sea snakes and lizards (marine iguanas, Galapagos)
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| Squid: |
- Live at mid-depth and migrate to surface at night
- most 10cm -1m; giant squid, eaten by sperm whales (up to 18m)
- swim by expelling water through a funnel
- use tentacles to catch small fish as their prey
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| Fish: |
- Cartilaginous fish:
- sharks:
- scavengers, feeding on fish, seals, especially weak individuals
- plankton feeders: basking shark, whale shark
- primitive animals with cartilage not bone skeletons
- plates (denticles) not scales
- rays, mainly carnivores, except manta ray: a herbivore
- Bony fish:
- fish body shapes:
- allow rapid movement, reduce drag
- minimized in fusiform body
- swim by series of body waves
- moving from head to tail, accelerating water
- shapes reflect lifestyles and feeding strategies:
- demersal:
- on ocean floor include cod and flatfishes
- open-ocean:
- include tuna and mackerel, salmon, trout in colder waters
- Vision Underwater:
- foggy medium, from light scattering by particles
- light gets dimmer with depth, large-eyed fish
- Deep Ocean Nekton:
- predators, live in cold, dimly lit ocean
- often bioluminescent
- may use lures, e.g. angler fish.
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| Herring and Cod: |
- Herring, include sardines, anchovies:
- fast growing, larval stage spent in estuaries
- swim with open mouths
- depletion of larger fish by heavy fishing reduces spawning
- Cod:
- once abundant in mid-/high latitudes of N. Hemisphere
- overfished, fisheries closed in 1992
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| Migrations: |
- Predictable movement of animals
- anadromous:
- salmon, spawn and grow in freshwater
- catadromous:
- eels
- spawn in Sargasso Sea
- return to coastal waters when mature
- added by magnetic compass?
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Department of Geological Sciences,
1001 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405-1403
Phone: (812) 855-5582 Last updated: 7 December 2000
Comments: simon@indiana.edu
Copyright
2000, The Trustees of Indiana University
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