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Iliiii >001044401 Ai V S- /r UNSW LIBRARY liiii >001044401 i MJ » a iV -iT-- 'a KM / Form 1 WAIVER THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES DECLARATION RELATING TO DISPOSITION OF THESIS This is to certify that I U KRitrl: r^iy.Ohll being a candidate for the degree of M....S.C... am fully aware of the policy of the University relating to the retention and use of higher degree theses, namely that the University retains the copies of any thesis submitted for examination, "and is free to allow the thesis to be consulted or borrowed. Subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act (1968) the University may issue the thesis in whole or in part, in photostat or microfilm or other copying medium." In the light of these provisions I grant the University Librarian permission to publish, or to authorise the publication of my thesis, in whole or in part, as he deems fit. > I also authorize the publication by University Microfilms of a 600 word abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International (D.A.I.). Signature Witness Date L:..JLr....J^ OYSTER COMMUNITIES ON THE CENTRAL COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES BY Khin Nyunt A thesis submitted to the University of New South Wales for the degree of Master of Science. 1976. UNIVERSITY OF N.S.W. r 16778 -3.AUG.77 LIBRARY This is to certify that the work presented in this thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other University or Institution. Khin Nyunt. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 1.0 Introduction 1 2.0 Description of Areas and Stations 9 ^ 2.1 Wallis Lake 9 2.2 Sydney Harbour 13 • 2.3 Jervis Bay 15 3.0 Methods 16 3.1 Sampling 16 3.2 Analysis 20 »3.3 Hydrological Survey 22 4.0 • Results and Discussion 22 4.1 Environmental parameters for the 26 * three localities 4.2 Species composition of oyster communities 37 4.3 Similarities between communities 39 4.4 Associations between species 50 4.5 Substrate and latitudinal effects on 57^ oyster communities , 4.6 Effects of the age of the community and 71 of water flow or oyster communities ' 4.7 Effect of salinity on oyster communities 77 4.8 Effect of season on oyster communities 84 5.0 Summary and Conclusions 91 6.0 Literature Cited 93 ABSTRACT Oyster communities from Wallis Lake, Sydney Harbour and Jervis Bay were studied and quantitative analyses made to determine the effects of latitude, substrate, age, salinity and season on the density and diversity of the communities. Mathematical and statistical criteria showed oyster communities to be influenced by the type of substrate such that density and diversity were greatest in rock oyster communities, next for oysters on mangrove pneumatophores and least in the oyster rack communities. It was also shown that the communities at the most northern locality had the greatest species diversity and that diversity is greater in communities in slow moving water than in those from fast moving water. The oysters from the most southern body weight to shell weight ratio than did those from the more northern areas. Similarly those from slow moving water were of a larger size than those from fast moving water. Finally oysters from localities exposed to salinity variations support denser but less diverse communities than oysters from localities of constant salinity. Associations of species in oyster beds were studied by means of the coefficient of association and Mountford's index. It was shown that most of the positive associations of species in oyster beds are due to their similar microhabitat requirements rather than predator/ prey relationships. Seasonal variation in oyster communities was studied at the most northern locality. The diversity and density of the communities showed little cyclic change but winter oysters were of greater length and had a lower body weight to shell weight ratio than summer oysters. ACKNOWLEDGMENT. I wish to express my grateful thanks to Professor A.K. O'Gower for his encouragement and general advice without which the study would not have been possible. Much help and encouragement has been supplied by staff members of the School of Zoology, especially Mrs. P.I. Dixon. To all those people thanks are rendered. Thanks are also due to the curators of The Australian Museum: Dr. W.F. Ponder (Molluscs); Dr. P.A. Hutchings (Annelids); Dr. D.J.G. Griffin (Crabs); Dr. D. Hoese (Fish) Miss E.C. Pope (Barnacles);and Miss H. Fisher. (Amphipods) who helped in identifying the respective organisms. This study was carried out under the Colombo plan scholarship granted by Commonwealth Education Department Officials who were very helpful and co-operative 1.0 Introduction Although it is a new branch of scientific study man has dealt with and developed knowledge of Community Ecology from the beginning of history. Dice (1952) stated "Ever since Homo sapiens was evolved he must have noted that many kinds of animals and plants are restricted to particular types of habitat, for his very life depended upon a knowledge of where to find his food and where to be on the lookout for dangerous beasts". "Animals migrat to where cleaner water and greener grass exist" (Old Burmese Proverb). These few words show that primitive man had a considerable knowledge of community ecology. He probably noticed trends in migrations, the environmental factors limiting distribution and abundance of animals, such as food and water, and probably also trophic structures in animal communities. However, the modern study of ecology started a little over a century ago (Humboldt, 1805; Grisebach, 1838; Mobius, 1877). The first zoologist to study an animal community was Karl Mobius (1883) who described the community occupying an oyster bank. Mobius proposed the term "biocoenosis", appreciating that communities are self regulating units. This thesis deals with the faunal communities inhabiting intertidal oyster shells in different environments and localities on the New South Wales coast (Wallis Lake, Sydney Harbour and Jervis Bay), Since oysters have long been of economic importance, there are many early investigations on some ecological aspects of oysters. Hopkins (1957) has reviewed these early studies (Brooks, 1891; Dean, 1890; Gilbert, 1899; Grave, 1905; Moore, 1910) in his annotated bibliography on the ecology of oysters. Studies on the communities of oyster beds have been made by Caspu (1950), Fleming (1952), Frey (1946), Hughes and Thomas (1971), Korringa (1951), Mattox (1949), Mistakidis (1957), MacDonald (1940), Pearse and Wharton (1938), Stephenson and Stephenson (1952), Wells (1961), but many other studies (e.g. Menzel and Hopkins, 1954; Menzel and Nichy, 1958; Nichy, 1956; McDermott, 1960) were only concerned with the predators and enemies of oysters. There are 11 species of edible oysters along the Australian coast (Thomson, 1953), but only the species Saooostrea cuocullata commeroialis (Iredale and Roughley, 1933) is of any real economic importance. These oysters are generally known as the Sydney Rock Oyster and are found abundantly in the intertidal zone of sheltered rocky shores in New South Wales and are mostly cultivated in estuarine lakes and rivers. This industry now reaps the benefit from a $4 million annual production (Malcolm, 1971) . While there have been many important reports on the oysters of Australian and adjacent waters (Cox, 1883; Cranfield, 1968; Fleming, 1952; Iredale and Roughly, 1933, Roughley 1922, 1926, 1928, 1933; Thomson, 1951, 1952, 1954) only Fleming (1952) has described the community of the oyster bed from Foveaux Strait. Fleming (1952) and other workers on oyster communities have been primarily concerned with the distribution and abundance of organisms (both animals and plants) in the area of the oyster bed. Almost all these workers just listed the species found near and among oyster shells, but did not make any quantitative attempt to analyse the oyster community. I have found only one recent paper on an oyster community (Hughes and Thomas, 1971) in which a computer was used for community analysis, but the authors were concerned only with the classification of the communities. Many studies on estuarine and rock communities in Australian waters have been limited to studies on distributions and zonation of species (Bennett and Pope, 1953; Endean et al., 1956; Guiler, 1960; MacIntyre, 1959). However, Meyer and O'Gower (1963), O'Gower and Meyer (1964, 1971) made association analysis on densities of six gastropod molluscs of the Sydney Rock platform communities; and Stephenson and Williams (1971) attempted ordination analysis on.the benthos communities at Sek Harbour, New Guinea and Moreton Bay (Stephenson et al,, (1970). Of the many quantitative analyses employed in studies of animal and plant communities, ordination analysis using various indices of similarity seem to be unreliable, since these methods are based on absence and presence of species. Nevertheless, ordination analysis presents graphic structure of the relationships between communities or between sites studied, and hence the relative importance of known, different, environmental factors may be assessed. Ordination analysis therefore has been frequently used by many ecologists for animal and plant community studies (Davis, 1963; Hughes and Thomas, 1971; Kontkaneu, 1957; Loya, 1972; Stephenson and Williams, 1971; Whittaker and Fairbanks, 1958). The determination of species diversity is one of the major criteria used by ecologists in describing a community and species diversity is most simply measured by counting species. However, the discovery that the logrithmic series showed a very close fit to the observed frequency distribution of species of insects having different numbers of individuals in a random sample prompted. Fisher et at. (1943) to propose the index of diversity a. Since then several indices of diversity have been suggested. Some of these indices are based on a theoretical relationship between the number of species and individuals in a sample (Preston, 194 8; Simpson, 1949; MacArthur, 1957; Mcintosh, 1967), while some indices are derived from information theory CBrillouin, 1960; Shannon and Weaver, 1963).
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