Benthic Suspension Feeders and Flow

Abstract

1997, xiii+409 pp., line drawings. H / b ISBN 0-521-44523-X. Price L50.There is now a fairly extensive, if fragmented, literature on suspension feeding, much of it concentrating on benthic animals, and so a book reviewing benthic suspension feeding is very appropriate at this time. The backgrounds of the authors are very different and provide different types of expertise; Wildish is a marine biologist and Kristmanson a chemical engineer specialising in flow. Thus this volume places particular emphasis, as the title indicates, on the effects of flow on benthic suspension feeders. Although it sounds rather narrow, this book is surprisingly readable, with very well explained and quite detailed coverage of a broad range of filter feeding taxa. It is organized into chapters on a variety of topics, like methods, dispersal, physiology, mechanisms, behaviour, effects of flow, ecosystems and future work.The book is not intended to be a research monograph and does not give every minute detail, but still covers its chosen area to the extent that it provides a very adequate starting point for new PhD students or others wishing to start on a new field of research. Enough of the literature is cited to enable key papers to be obtained in the many areas covered. However, the broad coverage and clear style also make this volume potentially useful for undergraduates wanting to read around to get an overview of specialist areas. At L50 in hardback it represents a degree of value for money by the inflated standards of many specialist academic books and I am pleased to be able to recommend it as something that should be purchased by university libraries and by those with an interest in benthic filter feeders. JOHN THORPE Animal Physiology. Adaptation and environment, 5th edition, by Knut Schmidt-Nielsen. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 1997, ix+607 pp., monotones, coloured and b/w line drawings. H / b ISBN 0-52 1-57098-95. Price L24.95KJS9649.95.Updated to include recent developments and new references, this classic text is aimed at students who want to know how animals work, what they do, and how they do it. The emphasis is on function related to environment (especially extreme environments where problems are greatest), and focuses on the themes of oxygen, foodlenergy, temperature, and water."Oxygen" compares problems of breathing air and water, providing an introduction to the more specialized literature. "Food and Energy" covers digestion @articularly interesting on digestion in herbivores, and chemical defences), and energy metabolism (including the problems of diving and locomotion). "Temperature" considers adaptations to extremes and temperature regulation (including torpor and hibernation), while "water" deals with 30 1

Gypsum dissolution is not a universal integrator of ‘water motion’

“…Other investigations assumed that the gypsum-dissolution technique would not only measure steady flow speed, but also measure additional flows, such as those due to waves (Goertemiller 1988;Molloy and Bolton 1996;Yamahira 1997). In the broadest sense, the dissolution technique has also been assumed to provide a good general index of integrated water motion or water movement (Table 1, column B; Wildish and Kristmanson 1997).…”

“…Since its first introduction, the gypsum-dissolution technique has been widely used in many habitats and for many applications, especially for studies of physical-biological interactions (Table 1). The gypsum-dissolution technique has been thought to provide a comparative or absolute measure of water movement that ''incorporates any water motion due to tidal as well as wind-wave effects in the same integrated measure' ' (Wildish and Kristmanson 1997). Furthermore, the dissolution technique has expanded to include materials other than gypsum (e.g., Koehl and Alberte 1988;Bartol et al 1999).…”

Intense Benthic Grazing on Phytoplankton in Coral Reefs Revealed Using the Control Volume Approach

“…0 is the grazing velocity . We note that because near-bed concentrations can be less than SCT, a is not necessarily the same as the actual rate of water processing by the benthic community (Wildish and Kristmanson 1997), and given the complexity of the reef topography, the bed elevation z 5 0 is placed at the lowest level below which nearly all the grazing takes place.…”

Effect of oysters Crassostrea virginica and bottom shear velocity on benthic-pelagic coupling and estuarine water quality

“…bottom shear velocity (shear stress) affects diffusional processes at the sediment -water interface (Dade 1993, Sanford & Crawford 2000, sediment erosion (Maa et al 1993), microphytobenthos erosion (Madsen et al 1993, Yallop et al 1994, Sutherland et al 1998, and possibly nutrient transformations and regeneration (Boynton 1985, Santschi et al 1990). Benthic suspensions feeders and flow interact in many ways (Wildish & Kristmanson 1997).…”