Book Description

Paperback 240pp; 297x210mm; published 2002. The first Clare Island Survey of 1909-11 was the most ambitious natural history project ever undertaken in Ireland and the first major biological survey of a specific area carried out in the world. The New Survey constitutes a fresh baseline study using up-to-date methodology to provide a comprehensive description of the island from its bedrocks to its biotic communities. The survey traces the history of human occupation and the impact of human activity on Clare Island. It has revealed almost a century of environmental change and will provide an invaluable source for future environmental monitoring. This third volume in the series examines the intertidal marine ecology of Clare Island. The shores of Clare Island are as exposed as any in Europe and are important baseline sites for the assessment of future environmental change. A knowledge of the ecology of the key organisms of these exposed shores is of fundamental importance. Articles in this volume address the activities and abundance of the key intertidal organisms on extremely exposed shores and upper shore rock pools, examining the chthamalids C. stellatus and C. montagui, the ecology of limpets of the genus Patella, the mussels of Clare Island, the small periwinkle Melarhaphe neritoides, the top shell Osilinus lineatus and the effects of predation by herring gulls on the dog whelk Nucella lapillus. It also includes a catalogue of intertidal Mollusca and an annotated checklist of the marine algae of Clare Island.