Distribution of Gastropods in the Intertidal Environment of South, Middle and North Andaman Islands, India

Abstract

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the gastropod diversity is high, due to the majority of shores are rocky. The wet rocky shore promotes algal growth, which is ultimate for feeding ground for gastropod growth and development leading to more diversity. The global warming, anthropogenic activities, industrial and domestic pollution, etc., have accelerated the loss of coastal and marine biodiversity components over the last few decades which has been of great concern. However, except global warming, the other factors were of least concern with reference to Andaman and Nicobar Islands biodiversity due to a pristine environment. Therefore, exploration of biodiversity in these islands is essential to create a baseline data for record and future research. Four locations of south to north Andaman Islands which represented Carbyns Cove from south Andaman, Rangat and Mayabunder from the Middle Andaman and Diglipur from the North Andaman were selected for this study. Gastropoda species were collected for a period of one year in three prevailing seasons of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They are South West Monsoon (SW monsoon), North East Monsoon (NE Monsoon) and Non Rainy Seasons (NR Seasons). The present study of gastropods distribution in the South, Middle and North Andaman groups of Islands suggested that there are 71 species belonging to 52 genus and 33 families. At any one of the time and any one of the locations, only one occurrence was noticed for 38 species and remaining 33 species were overlapping with respect to stations and seasons. Evaluation of the cluster suggested that Cluster A (NR season in Carbyns Cove) and Cluster B (NE and SW Monsoon in Mayabunder) as a separate entity among the 12 combinations of stations and seasons due to their species representation. It How to cite this paper:

Assemblage of Gastropods in the Rocky Intertidal Zone of Asry Beach, Kingdom of Bahrain

“…Over-all, diversity in the rocky habitat of Asry Beach is moderate with the weighted mean of H′ = 2.06 however evenly distributed (J' = 1.88) ( Table 2). Results imply that the resources specifically food [5] in the sampled rocky habitat supports the assemblage of gastropod species thus maintaining ecological balance in beaches [9].…”

“…As part of the public beach, however people prefer the sandy part and spend their leisure time in water for swimming. Hence this area remains undisturbed which promotes massive growth of algae that provides nutrients and venue for ecological and intra-inter-specific interactions [5] among the faunal community of organisms. Based on observation and results of the study on the entire intertidal ecosystem [17] human factor is considerably not a limiting factor for the gastropod assemblage to be abundant in the area.…”

“…Results imply stability of gastropod species assemblage due to availability of food resources to support community structure [9]. Wet rocky biota promotes massive algal growth which serves as feeding ground for gastropod species [5]. Individual gastropod species only compete for space [6], be it on the rock surface or crevices.…”

“…This zone is considered highly productive with varying levels of biodiversity and dynamic due to diversity of both macrofauna and macroflora [2][3][4]. The wet rocky shore promotes enormous algal growth which serves as the feeding ground for the many macrofaunal community, specifically the gastropods thus promoting more diversity [5]. The rocky intertidal as a community is influenced by competitive processes primarily competition for space.…”

The Full Hierarchical Structuration of Species Abundances Reliably Inferred from the Numerical Extrapolation of Still Partial Samplings: A Case Study with Marine Snail Communities in Mannar Gulf (India)

“…Tropical marine ecosystems in shallow waters are of major concerns to ecologists and conservationists, as they are considered as one of the first ecosystem to suffer significantly from obvious impacts due to the on-going climatewarming [1,2]. Moreover, these same ecosystems are of major interest, being considered as embodying remarkably high levels of diversity and biological complexity [1,[3][4][5]. However, precisely because of their usually high species richness, also including numerous rare species, the samplings of these communities often remain substantially incomplete [6].…”