TY  - THES
TY  - BOOK
T1  - Species composition and diversity of molluscs in Merambong Shoal
A1  - Norasmah Sahak.
LA  - English
UL  - http://discoverylib.upm.edu.my/discovery/Record/257990
AB  - A study on marine molluscs was carried out in seagrass beds of Merambong Shoal, located off the coastline of Tanjung Pelepas in the Straits of Tebrau, Peninsular Malaysia. The objectives of the study were to identify all the molluscs species found in the seagrass beds focusing on two classes, Gastropoda and Bivalvia, and also to investigate the distribution pattern of these molluscs species between two time durations, i.e. August and September. For the purpose of studying the species taxa composition and diversity, three stations labeled as A1, A2 and A3, were established according to the density of the seagrasses covers. A1 was referred as 90% coverage, A2 as 50% coverage and A3 as 25% coverage. The samplings were conducted during the low tide. Both quantitative data and qualitative methods have been carried out during the sampling. A quantitative data was obtained by using a 1 m x 1 m sampling quadrat, while the qualitative data was taken by collecting the sample across the seagrass bed. The molluscs were collected according to the two groups, the epifaunal or infaunal molluscs. There were 40 species of molluscs collected that comprised of 13 species of gastropods and 27 species of bivalves. Overall the gastropods were mostly found attached on the seagrass leaves (epifauna) and bivalves were found unattached to the seagrass leaves (infauna). However there are a few species that were found in both habitats. The abundance of molluscs found in this study showed a significant differents between the two time durations and between the three stations where as gastropods were dominant in station A1 which was 90% coverage and bivalves were dominant in station A2 which was 50% coverage. Besides that, there were the different in the species dominant in that area at different time. The existence of significant difference between species abundance of the two months were most probably due to the different breeding season and duration of life or might be the effect of water pollution which could change the species ecology.
CN  - FS 2007 180
ER  -