Abstract
The white sand mussel Donax serra Röding is an important and often dominant component of the sandy beach macrofauna around the southern African coastline from Namibia through to the Transkei, with very large populations on the West Coast and in the Algoa Bay region (de Villiers, 1973, 1974; McLachlan and Hanekom, 1979; Bally, 1981). It is commonest on exposed beaches and filter feeds on phytoplankton and detritus. East of False Bay it coexists with Donax sordidus Hanley, which occupies a niche lower down the shore than D. serra (McLachlan, 1977; Ansell, 1981). On the West Coast adult D. serra occupy this infratidal zone. In both areas, high variability in population size occurs between adjacent beaches, which may be due to differences in food availability within the surf zone, which is in turn related to wave action, source of nutrients, sediment size and beach slope (McLachlan and Hanekom, 1979; Bally, 1981). Even on scales of a few hundred metres there is considerable variation in the distribution of mussels (Bally, 1981). Between the eastern and western Cape beaches very much smaller populations of mussels occur (Table 1).
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Hutchings, L., Nelson, G., Horstman, D.A., Tarr, R. (1983). Interactions Between Coastal Plankton and Sand Mussels along the Cape Coast, South Africa. In: McLachlan, A., Erasmus, T. (eds) Sandy Beaches as Ecosystems. Developments in Hydrobiology, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2938-3_36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2938-3_36
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