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Mud flat characteristics
- Unvegetated but can have microalgal films
- Phytoplankton and zooplankton
- Major food source is detritus
- Know what it is
- Sediment
- Fine-grained: silt or silt plus some sand
- Redox layer is shallow
- 1m is redox on sandy beaches
- Usually in mud flats, redox is 1mm down
- Redox smells like H2SO4
- Sediment cohesive, low porosity
- Good for burrows
- Usually silty layer on surface: tiny crustaceans live there
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FAUNA
- Phytoplankton and zooplankton
- Detritus is major food source
- Scant epi fauna
- Not many crabs etc in US-Aus and India mud flats have them
- Near-surface infauna: polychaets, amphipods
- Deep burrowers: angel wing clam (Cyrtopleura)
- Macoma: bent-nosed clam
- Large lobster like shrimp that burrow in
- Sometimes if burrow big enough, fish and small critters that live in mud flat with the creature that made the burrow
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Scant epi fauna
- Horn snails (erithidea)-slurp microalgae off mud
- Crawls around vacuuming the stuff up as it goes
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angel wing clam (Cyrtopleura)
- deep burrowers
- Uses siphons that reach up to surface
- Shell can't close, but protected by mud
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Macoma: bent-nosed clam
- 1 siphon-vacuums sediment other releases out flow
- Vacuum siphon can move around animal
- Fish bite siphons off, they regrow
- Leathery coating on shell
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BIRDS
- Come with low tide
- Niche partitioning
- What they do in their habitat
- Birds are in same habitat, but have different niche
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BIRDS on or over mud flat
- Gulls & terns visit
- Sandpipers/pluvers; Great blue Herron; great/reddish/snowy egret
- Curlew, stilt; spoonbill
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Low tide-short beaked birds on/over mud flats
- Sandpipers and pluvers
- FEED on small animals near surface
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Long beaked birds on/over mudflat
- Big birds-eat shrimp, crab and small fishes
- Biggest = GREAT BLUE Heron
- Big grey bird
- Great egret, reddish egret ; snowy egret
- Reddish egret Goes out on mud flat spread wings out to create shadow=> animals/fish try to get under
- Snowy egret-black legs but yellow feat
- Hunted severely due to pretty feathers
- Stopped after poachers kill warden of game preserve
- Chases after the fish-rare
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Small birds on/over mud flats
- Brown, curved beak-curlew
- Stilt: black and white; eats insects in salty pools
- Spoonbill: bill shaped like spoon
- Pink color
- Eats small stuff
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SALT MARSH characteristics
- Contains grasses and shrubs that can withstand being in salt water
- Excrete salt
- Secrete salt
- Emergent vegetation
- Spartina; fiddler crab, ribbed muscle; litorina(snail)
- Succession takes place: bare mud-> mussels->spartina
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Spartina:
- In salt marsh
- Cord grass-wind-polinated:Produce seed also send out shoot
- High primary productivity, few grazers
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Litorina (snail)
- Hell cellulose on
- Contributes detritus
- Colonizes mud flat, usually after ribbed mussel settles
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Ribbed MUSCLES-Geukensia
- Filter small particles; also mudExcrete mud as pseudo feces
- Settled shells and pseudofeces creates habitat for spantina (salt marsh)
- Form clusters and have byssus attachment
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Fiddler crabs (Uca)
- Feed among spartina on small particles
- SEXUALLY dimorphic- Male has 1 big pincer and 1 little one &Female has 2 pincers
- Eaten by: Blue crab; Rail-bird that makes clacking noise; Whooping crane (Famous and endangered bird;Only found on migration route between canada and TX)
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UPPER DRY MARSH flora
- Pickle weed-Salicornia
- Fleshy like a cactus
- Can be eaten like pickle
- If on survior
- Salt grass: Distichlis
- Not as tolerant as Spartina
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Upper dry marsh fauna
- Find lots of birds like stilts around salty pools
- Oxygenated pools
- Fish
- Find killifish
- Hornsnails -not fish
- Sheephead minnow fish
- Bright blue male (in our tank) with 3 females
- Eaten by lots of different birds
- Eat insects etc
- Not too many mammals
- River otter etc
- Only occasionally
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Salt marsh creek
- Drain water
- Blue crab, pin fish,
- mullet(eat plankton)-
- mouth turned up
- Can jump
- Can get to decent side (1-1.5 ft??)
- Have fin back high on body
- Snails
- Ducks and birds rest/even nest in there
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How do upper marshes help inland areas
Flood and hurrican barrier
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