(full paper is archived in the Miller Library)
Title: Meiofauna - sediment relationships in a sandy subtidal region at the Hopkins Marine Station
Student Author(s): Evans, James E.
Faculty Advisor(s): Wagenbach, Gary
Pages: 32
Location: Research Reports Carleton College Biology 212
Date: March 1976
Abstract: The topography of a sandy, subtidal region near the Hopkins Marine Station (Monterey Bay, California) can be characterized as a series of low mounds separated by parallel troughs or channels. An examination of these areas proved that the mounds exhibit finer mean grain sizes, better sorting, more organic material, and greater abundance and diversity of meiofauna in comparison to the troughs. It is believed that the abundance of meiofauna, especially nematodes and harpacticoid copepods, can be related to the sediment sorting at the various stations. Mound sites are better sorted as they are in lower energy hydrodynamic regimes and are colonized by tube-building polychaetes (Diopatra sp.), which act to stabilize the sediment. The trough areas are believed to be rip-current channels, which concentrate bottom currents in narrow channel-ways due to the morphology of the shallow, submarine floor in the study area.