Event Title
Drilling Patterns among Naticidae
Faculty Mentor
Melanie Devore
Keywords
Melanie Devore
Abstract
The Naticidae are a group of gastropods that feed by drilling mollusks and other Naticidae. Upon analyzing the frequency of predation/cannibalism and drilling frequency of cerith species from Abaco Island, Bahamas at a site near Marsh Harbour, we found that the drilling frequency on Naticidae is 7.1% from biased visual (14 individuals) and 22.2% from bulk collections (27 individuals). Extremely small drilled shells were overlooked when relying on biased visual collection methods. The visual samples were collected from a 12m long shell strand and the bulk sample represented all shells from a 0.5 m segment of the strand. The drilling frequency appears to be 11.5 % out of the total number of shells, 3.3% showed fracture holes similar to those produced by predators. These are preliminary data and we are still investigating both predation of ceriths by Naticidae, taphonomic influences, and means of refining sampling techniques.
Session Name:
Biological and Environmental Sciences I
Start Date
4-4-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
4-4-2014 10:00 AM
Location
HSB 144
Drilling Patterns among Naticidae
HSB 144
The Naticidae are a group of gastropods that feed by drilling mollusks and other Naticidae. Upon analyzing the frequency of predation/cannibalism and drilling frequency of cerith species from Abaco Island, Bahamas at a site near Marsh Harbour, we found that the drilling frequency on Naticidae is 7.1% from biased visual (14 individuals) and 22.2% from bulk collections (27 individuals). Extremely small drilled shells were overlooked when relying on biased visual collection methods. The visual samples were collected from a 12m long shell strand and the bulk sample represented all shells from a 0.5 m segment of the strand. The drilling frequency appears to be 11.5 % out of the total number of shells, 3.3% showed fracture holes similar to those produced by predators. These are preliminary data and we are still investigating both predation of ceriths by Naticidae, taphonomic influences, and means of refining sampling techniques.