The Development, General Morphology and Subsequent Elimination of Barnacle Populations, Balanus crenatus and B. Balanoides, After a Heavy Initial Settlement

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Bakelite panels suspended two feet below the water surface in the Firth of Clyde during the spring of 1949 became thickly covered with hummocks of barnacles with smaller individuals in the intervening furrows. Each hummock consisted of a dome-shaped cluster 3 cm. high and the polygonal base had a long diam. of 3-5 cm. Individual barnacles in the center of the hummock were enormously elongated and those in the periphery decreased symmetrically. From the center to the periphery of a hummock the individuals had an increasingly outward curvature. The elongated growth resulting from the closely packed spat made the calcareous parts extremely fragile, their attachment feeble, and their dislodgment easy. A 2d lighter settlement had become attached to the distal parts of the main settlement. Some of the growth forms produced by overcrowding have previously been described in the literature as subspp. and vars. Quadrats, one meter square, on sandstone along the shore were artifically denuded in March and became quickly covered with dense hummocks of barnacles, but due to their loose attachment, wave action, the predatory attacks of the mollusk, Nucella lapillus, and well developed growths of algae, they had mostly broken away by November and left the rock bare again.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: