A SIMPLIFIED FIELD GUIDE TO THE BRYOZOAN SPECIES FOUND ON THE ROOTS OF THE RED MANGROVE (RHIZOPHORA MANGLE) IN AND AROUND KINGSTON HARBOUR, JAMAICA, W.I.

摘要

Bryozoans in the caribbean and jamaica. ―The early works on bryozoans in the Caribbean focused mainly on taxonomic descriptions using specimens collected from dredge material acquired during a number of scientific expeditions (Banta and Carson, 1977) during the early part of the nineteenth century. Subsequent studies have looked at the ecology of the bryozoans in the reef environment in a number of Caribbean islands (Jackson, 1979, 1984; Logan, 1981; Jackson and Winston, 1982; Winston, 1984) and highlighted their importance in the modern reef system. With respect to epibenthic communities of the mangrove rhizophore only Goodbody (1961a,b; 1962), Siung (1976, 1980) and Chow (1989) have looked at these in any detail, and only a few papers have reported bryozoans associated with the epibenthic community of the mangrove root system (Sutherland, 1980; Winston, 1984; and Fransen, 1986). THE SESSILE COMMUNITY ON MANGROVE ROOTS. ―The prop roots of the red mangrove Rhizophora mangle provide an attractive substrate for marine fauna and flora to settle. Studies carried out by Siung (1976), Warner (1969), Alleng (1991), Hechtel (1965), Fisher (1985) and Goodbody (1962) have shown that the mangroves around Kingston Harbour support a diverse and crowded sessile community in which competition for space is very intense. They also observed that most of the sessile fauna were suspension feeders and obtained food from detrital material.